Nurith Aviv

Nurith Aviv was born in 1945 in Tel Aviv

Nurith Aviv was born on 11 March 1945 in Tel Aviv. Her father, Hans Chaim Finn, was one of the first press photographers in the country. She helped him with his photography work from a young age.

She studied film cinematography at IDHEC in Paris, where she was the first woman admitted to the cinematography program. She was also the first woman in France recognized as a director of photography by the CNC.

As a cinematographer she worked on about a hundred feature and documentary films, starting with Shablul by Boaz Davidson. She worked with directors such as Agnès Varda, Amos Gitai, René Allio, Jacques Doillon and Michal Bat-Adam.

As a director she made documentaries in which language is the main subject. Her film From Language to Language opened a trilogy on Hebrew and won first prize at Docaviv in 2004. Retrospectives of her work were held at the Jeu de Paume in 2008 and at the Centre Pompidou in 2015.

She teaches film at the Sam Spiegel school in Jerusalem, as well as in Paris and Munich. In 2023 a portrait film about her by Zohar Barnett was screened at Docaviv.