Diary

Story

Right at the beginning, David Perlov comments: “From now on I’ll have to decide whether to eat the soup or film it.” In 1973, the director bought a camera and documented his life over a period of ten years. The project was born of necessity: Perlov, who had immigrated from Brazil, couldn’t get a job in the Israeli film industry and was looking for his own forms of aesthetic expression. The film’s six chapters take the viewer from Tel Aviv to Paris, from London to Brazil. Perlov documents his daughters as they grow up and films encounters with Claude Lanzman, Isaac Stern, Joris Ivens, Irving Howe and Klaus Kinski. Diary is not only a man’s personal and political diary, but also a portrait of a deeply unsettled country in the years immediately after the Yom Kippur war.

Director

David Perlov (*1930; † 2003) emigrated in 1958 from Brazil via Paris to Israel. Diary is one of the most important documentaries in Israel's young history. During the making of the film, Perlov's daughter Yael became its editor.