27-02-2025
Renen Schorr Dies: Director, Activist & Founder Of The Jerusalem Sam Spiegel Film School Was 72
Israeli filmmaker Renen Schorr, founder of the Jerusalem Sam Spiegel Film School, has died at the age of 72.
The school, which opened in 1989, was a gamechanger for Israeli cinema with alumni over the past 35 years including Nir Bergman (Broken Wings), Nadav Lapid (Synonymes), Tom Shoval (Youth), Talya Lavie (Zero Motivation) and Rama Burshtein (Fill The Void).
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Schorr, who was born in Jerusalem in 1952, built his career alongside the fledgeling Israeli film industry to become a seminal figure in its development later on.
A filmmaker in his own right, his best-known work is the 1987 drama Late Summer Blues.
Set in the wake of the 1967 Six-Day War, it follows a group of seven high school graduates in their final summer together before being conscripted into the Israeli army.
The screenplay was inspired by Schorr's involvement in the 1970 Senior's Letter to Prime Minister Golda Meir – in which a group of high school students questioned the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, and suggested they would only sign up for the draft if the government committed to peace – as well as his experiences working as a journalist for the official army magazine during the Yom Kippur war in 1973.
He wrote an outline for the film in 1976 while a student at the film department of Tel Aviv University, which had opened its doors in 1974, and would co-write the final screenplay with actor Doron Nesher from 1978 to 1985.
The production struggled to secure state finance with the Ministry of Industry and Commerce, which controlled film funds at the time, describing the screenplay as anti-Israel and pro-PLO.
Eventually shot on $150,000, with support from the more autonomous Israel Film Fund, it opened the Jerusalem Film Festival in 1987 and was a hit at home. It was also one of the first Israeli films to enjoy an international career after it played at numerous festivals and was acquired by then Kino International and Janus Films for the U.S.
Schorr, who had previously headed up the film department at the Beit Zvi School of the Performing Arts outside Tel Aviv in the 1980s, was approached by Jerusalem mayor Teddy Kollek and Jerusalem Foundation President Ruth Cheshin in early 1989 to set up and run a film school in the city, with a three-month lead time for its opening.
The pair were looking for different ways to stem the exodus of young people from Jerusalem to the more laid-back, secular beachfront city of Tel Aviv.
In a 2016 interview with Israel's Haaretz newspaper, Schorr recalled how the decision to locate the school in Jerusalem was controversial at the time, given that Israel's film industry was predominantly situated in Tel Aviv, and that some of his film world acquaintances even called him 'a traitor'
He ran the school for 30 years, before handing over the CEO and executive director baton in 2019 to Dana Blankstein Cohen, who remains in the role today.
As well as creating an institution that was eventually on an equal footing with top film schools around the world, Schorr also spearheaded the Sam Spiegel International Film Lab in 2011.
Taking inspiration from the Sundance Film Lab, the initiative has incubated dozens of award-winning films over the past 14 years including Laszlo Nemes's Oscar-winning Son Of Saul, Lapid's The Kindergarten Teacher, Antoneta Kusijanovic's Murina, Philippe Lacote's Run, Nadav Lapid's The Kindergarten Teacher, Alvaro Brechner's Mr. Kaplan, Burhan Qurbani's We Are Young, We Are Strong and Mikko Myllylahti's The Woodcutter Story.
Schorr's other achievements across his career included being one of the founders of the Israel Film Fund in 1979; the initiator and advisor for the New Fund for Film and Television (1992); the engineer of the Gelfand Fund for Short Films (1996); the driving force behind Israel's joining of the European Film Academy (2001); the founder and chair of the Jerusalem Film Fund (2008); the founder of the Cinematheques in Herzliya and Holon (2007, 2008), and founder and director of the First Feature Fund for Sam Spiegel graduates (2015).
His filmography also includes After (1977), The Battle of Fort Williams (1981), A Wedding in Jerusalem (1985), The Loners (2009) and final work, Wake Up, Grandson – Letters to my Rebellious Rabbi (2023).
The latter film saw Schorr revisit the life of his grandfather Rabbi Avraham Heller and his exploits in the 1948 Battle of Safed, which led to the expulsion of some 10,000 Palestinians from the hilltop Galilee town including current Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and his family.
In the last year of his life, Schorr added his mother's maiden name Heller to his official surname, in a move linked to the making of his final film.
Sam Spiegel Film and Television School CEO said the establishment's community was heartbroken by the news of Schorr's death.
'He established what was to become not only his life's work, but a project that changed Israeli cinema beyond recognition and thus Israeli culture as a whole,' she said.
'Renen was at the helm of the school for more than a generation and did so with unprecedented passion that allowed the school to become a leading and noteworthy institution in the world of cinema. Our hearts are with his family and with the many for whom Renen was a significant mentor in their own journeys as filmmakers and as humans.'
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