History
After serving as a judge at the Cannes film festival, Lia van Leer decided to organize a similar event in Israel. Jeanne Moreau, Lillian Gish Warren Beatty and John Schlesinger arrived in Israel to attend the debut.
In 1989, van Leer persuaded American philanthropist Jack Wolgin to set up a competition bearing his name for the best Israeli films. The Wolgin Prize has become the country's most prestigious feature film award.
In 2008, van Leer, 84, stepped down as director of the festival and turned the job over to a new CEO, Ilan de Vries.
Read more about this topic: Jerusalem Film Festival
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Both place and time were changed, and I dwelt nearer to those parts of the universe and to those eras in history which had most attracted me.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“We don’t know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don’t understand our name at all, we don’t know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)
“There is nothing truer than myth: history, in its attempt to “realize” myth, distorts it, stops halfway; when history claims to have “succeeded” this is nothing but humbug and mystification. Everything we dream is “realizable.” Reality does not have to be: it is simply what it is.”
—Eugène Ionesco (b. 1912)