Margot Klausner
Co-founder of the first film laboratory in Israel, Margot Klausner helped produce some of the most important documentaries and feature films of the Zionist era. Klausner made Aliyah to Palestine in 1926 and with her husband, Yehoshua Brandstatter, brought Moscow’s Habimah Theater on tour the following year, eventually persuading the troupe to relocate to Palestine in 1932. In 1933 the couple created Urim, their film production company, and produced Land of Promise, their first documentary, which won a prize at the Venice Film Festival in 1935. In 1936, Klausner both created a theater in Palestine for German Jewry and acquired 50% of Carmel Newsreels (she acquired the other half of the company two years later). Until the advent of Israeli television in 1968, Carmel produced weekly newsreels which Klausner hoped would shape Israeli attitudes about their country. Ultimately, Klausner’s studios produced 1,000 documentaries, 850 advertising films, 400 newsreels, 1,100 television productions and 100 feature films, including The Boy Across the Street (which won a prize at the Venice Film Festival). She also helped fund Tent City, Every Mile a Stone, Hill 24 Doesn’t Answer, Clouds Over Israel, The Policeman, The Hero’s Wife, Peeping Toms and Big Eyes. In 1974 she published her memoir, The Dream Industry, Memories and Facts—Twenty-Five Years of the Israel Motion Picture Studios.


How to cite this page
Jewish Women's Archive. "Margot Klausner." (Viewed on April 22, 2018) <https://jwa.org/people/klausner-margot>.