Aleksander Ford

Aleksander Ford was born in 1908 in Kyiv

Ford was born Mosze Lifszyc in Kyiv, then part of the Russian Empire, in 1908. He studied art history at the University of Warsaw.

He made short silent films and then his first feature, Mascotte, in 1930. His first sound film was Legion of the Streets in 1932. In 1932 he came to the Land of Israel at the invitation of producer Ze'ev Markovich and made Sabra, a film about pioneers.

When World War II began he fled to the Soviet Union. There he set up a film unit for the Polish People's Army, working with Jerzy Bossak.

After the war he headed the state company Film Polski and helped rebuild Polish film production. From 1948 he taught at the National Film School in Łódź, where Andrzej Wajda and Roman Polanski were among his students. His films included Majdanek: Cemetery of Europe (1945) and Knights of the Teutonic Order (1960).

During the 1968 political crisis in Poland he was expelled from the Communist Party and left the country. He lived in Israel for 2 years, then moved to Denmark and settled in the United States. He took his own life in a Florida hotel in 1980.