Jewish Families in the GDR. A Documentary Research Journey

Born and raised in Israel, Yael Reuveny graduated from the Sam Spiegel Film & Television School in Jerusalem in 2005. Since then she has been living and working between Germany and Israel. Her award winning films include Tales of the Defeated (2009), Farewell, Herr Schwarz (2013) and Promised Lands (2021).

Parallel to her work as a documentarian, Yael Reuveny is also the creator of museum video installations, among them Tunicata (2017) for the Martin Gropius Bau Berlin and Mesubin (2020) for the core exhibition in the Jewish Museum Berlin.

Research Project

As part of her fellowship Yael Reuveny is concerned with the lives of people who carried a double weight: the heaviness of German-Jewish history and the big dream of a new socialist state.

In her interview research project she will be asking: What is the trade-off between big identities, histories and ideologies and the private, small, personal lives of people? How does one navigate within the ideological frame one was born into?

To reveal how this complexity manifests itself in everyday life Yael Reuveny will set out on a visual research journey – a non linear, multiple point of view interview project.

The W. Michael Blumenthal Fellowship is sponsored by the Berthold Leibinger Foundation.