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David Perlov
was born in Rio de Janeiro on June 9th, 1930. He descends from
a Hassidic family
(of the Stolin-Carlin dynasty) that settled
in Safed, Palestine, in 1857. His grandfather emigrated from Palestine
to Brazil and it was he who brought Perlov up from the age of
12. His father was a performing magician whom Perlov met only
few times in his life. Perlov grew up in Sao Paulo and from an
early age showed interest and talent in drawing. In the years
following the end of World War II Perlov became one of the main
leaders of the Zionist Socialist youth movement in Brazil. His
artistic vocation, however, led him first to Paris where he stayed
for six years, studying at the 'Ecole des Beaux Arts' and later
on at the studio of Arpad Szenes. The prevailing abstract tendencies
in the 1950s art world did not satisfy Perlov, and his need to
confront more human subjects drew him to cinema. He became an
assistant to Henri Langlois, the founder and director of the Cinematheque
Francaise, and worked as editor with the documentary filmmaker
Joris Ivens.
In 1957 Perlov
directed his first film Old Aunt China, based on drawings
of a young girl, which he found in the cellar of the house he
was living in.
Despite the
professional possibilities opening up to him in Paris, Perlov
decided to move together with his wife Mira to Israel. They settled
in Kibbutz Bror Hayil in 1958. Their twin daughters, Yael and
Naomi, were born there in 1959. In 1961, they left the kibbutz
for Tel Aviv.
Perlov began
directing documentary films for the local authorities, yet throughout
the 1960s he encountered time and again the ideological arbitrariness
of the Israeli establishment. Based on patriotic propaganda, social
realism and a collective rather than individual outlook on reality,
this establishment was the only funding source for documentary
filmmaking at the time. Still, Perlov took advantage of every
work opportunity he had to introduce his own cinematic conception.
Following
the Eichmann trial, Perlov made In Thy Blood Live, the
first Israeli film accepted at the Venice Film Festival, where
it was awarded an honorary mention. His next film, Old Age
Home, awarded him the Van-Leer Foundation prize. In 1963 Perlov
made In Jerusalem, a turning point in his cinematic career
and a milestone in Israeli cinema. The film set a new, free style
for documentary work in Israel.
At the end
of the 1960s Perlov made his only two feature films: The Pill,
a burlesque fantasy based on a script by Nissim Aloni, and 42:6:
a dramatic reconstruction of the life of David Ben-Gurion.
Notwithstanding
the acclaim awarded to his documentaries by film critics - above
all to In Jerusalem - by the early 1970s Perlov was no
longer receiving commissions from Israeli authorities. In 1973,
he decided to "start from the beginning," as he himself
put it. Using basic film equipment and minimal resources, Perlov
began work on his epic creation Diary. In it, Perlov documented
the day-to-day of his life alongside the dramatic events that
took place in Israel at the time. The film, whose making lasted
over 10 years, consists of six one-hour chapters. The production
was backed by the British channel 4, where it was first screened.
In 1973, Perlov
was among the founders of the new Film and Television department
at the Tel Aviv University. From then on, teaching became a crucial
part of his artistic and personal development. Perlov also joined
the teaching staff of the Sam Spiegel Film School in Jerusalem.
In 1987 Perlov was appointed associate professor, and 10 years
later full professor at the Film and Television Department of
Tel Aviv University.
In 1998, he
began work on the Revised Diary. The three one-hour films
-- "Sheltered Childhood", "Day to Day and Rituals",
and "Back to Brasil", center on specific topics, unlike
the river-like flow of the earlier Diary.
Already in
Paris in 1953, Perlov started taking still photographs. In the
last few years of his life he began to devote himself almost entirely
to photography, turning to color photographs that were shown in
three individual exhibitions. His last film, My Stills
released in 2003, was entirely based on the photographs he took
over a period of fifty years. That same year, he completed the
editing of Anemones a film he produced with his university
students.
When Perlov
was awarded the Israel Prize for cinematic achievement in 1999,
the eminent film critic Uri Klein wrote in Haaretz: "Perlov
brought to Israeli film the tradition of the documentary cinema,
fusing theory and practice. His greatness was in the fact that
his work was at the same time personal and public, revealing and
mysterious, intimate and all embracing, as all great art is."
David Perlov
died on December 13, 2003.
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Works dedicated to Perlov
1965
"Not the Victor's Honor", by Nathan Zach, in All
the Milk and Honey, 1965; the poem is dedicated to David
Perlov
1983
Bokito, a film by Shalev Vayness and Reuven Hacker,
dedicated to David Perlov
1994
"I believe that beyond these bushes I could bath in warm
cisterns", by Zohar Eitan, a poem in reply to a quotation from
Perlov, from Diary - Chapter 2, in Midrash, Helikon
, anthological series of contemporary poetry, no. 12, autumn
1994, p. 29 & in Eitan's poetry collection "Shoo-Hai
Practices the Javelin", Tel Aviv: Bitan, 1996.
1994
Six large watercolor paintings, each in reference to a
chapter from Perlov's Diary, by Iris Kovalio, from an
exhibition at the Israel Museum , Jerusalem
2002
"The Stuntman's Shoes: David Perlov's New Diary", a
poem by Yosef Sharon, in Ha'Aretz,
22 February 2002
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Prizes and honorary appointments
1963
Bronze Medal at the Venice Film Festival for the film In Jerusalem
1963
'Director of the year', the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute
1984
Honorary member, Beit Zvi school of stage and cinematic
arts
1986
Special Jury Prize, the Culture and Arts Council of
Israel
and the Israeli Film Institute on Diary Excerpts
1989
Canadian studies grant - the Canadian documentary film
1990
Director of the Decade, the Israeli Film Critics
Association
1994
Uzi Peres lifetime achievement award of the
Israel
Film
Academy
"Latino-American Prize" for his contribution to Israeli
cinema
1995
Israeli
Academy
award for all
his films
1999
Honorary president of the Forum of Documentary Filmmakers,
February 1999
1999
Israel Prize for cinema
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