Lia van Leer

Lia van Leer was born in 1924 in Bălți

Lia Greenberg was born on 8 August 1924 in Bălți, then part of Romania, to a Jewish family. Her father Simon traded in wheat and her mother Olga volunteered with WIZO. In 1940 her parents sent her to visit her sister in the Land of Israel, and her parents were later killed in the Holocaust.

She studied humanities at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 1952 she married Wim van Leer, a Dutch engineer, pilot and film lover, and the couple moved to Haifa.

In 1955 the couple started a film club in Haifa, screening films for friends at home. Their film collection became the basis of the Israel Film Archive, founded in 1960. In 1973 she set up the Haifa Cinematheque and then a cinematheque in Jerusalem, where she moved.

In 1981 the cinematheque and archive moved to a new building in the Hinnom Valley, and she became its first director. In 1984 she founded the Jerusalem Film Festival. After her husband died in 1991, she created an award for young filmmakers in his name.

She received the Israel Prize in 2004 and French honors including the Legion of Honour. She died on 13 March 2015.