Film and televisionהלגה קלר

Helga Keller

Helga Keller was a German-born film editor and media scholar who worked in British and Israeli film from the 1940s through the 1960s.

1921 to 2013Editing British and Israeli filmsFilm education in Israeli schoolsThe monograph Sculpture as Homeland

Born: 6 May 1921, Darmstadt
Died: 1 March 2013, Tel Aviv
Occupation: film editor, media scholar

Helga Keller was born in 1921 in Darmstadt

Helga Keller was born Helga May in Darmstadt, Germany, in 1921 to a Jewish family. Her father ran a textile business and played organ for the liberal Jewish community, and her mother was a painter. She studied graphics from a young age and attended a gymnasium until she was expelled for being Jewish.

In 1939 she fled with her family to England, where she studied graphics and worked on animated films. In 1940 she married Maurice Cranston, later a philosopher. She edited films in Britain, including Hamlet, Richard III and Bonjour Tristesse.

She moved to Israel in 1958 and in 1961 married Mel Keller, an American-born musician. In the 1960s she edited Israeli films, mostly documentaries, as well as features such as They Were Ten. From the late 1960s she worked on film education, and from 1985 to 1992 she coordinated film and media education in schools.

She managed the estate of sculptors Rudi Lehmann and Hedwig Grossman and wrote a monograph about them, published in 2005. She died in 2013 at Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv and was buried in Herzliya.