Michael Kovner | A Portrait

Michael Kovner is one of Israel’s most prominent landscape artists. Born in 1948 in Kibbutz Ein Hahoresh, he later served in an elite IDF commando unit. Today, he devotes his time to painting. His parents, Abba and Vitka Kovner, were key leaders of the Jewish resistance in the Vilnius Ghetto. After the uprising failed, they joined the partisans and continued fighting the Nazis. After the war, they immigrated to Israel. Abba Kovner went on to become one of the founding voices of Israeli poetry and a leading intellectual in the young state. It was only twenty years after his father’s death that Michael Kovner began to truly engage with his family’s history and the memory of his father. Israeli filmmakers Avner Faingulernt and Hagar Saad Shalom captured Michael Kovner in the act of creation, while reflecting with him on his father’s legacy in the context of present-day realities. Special thanks to The Ciesla Foundation, Washington, D.C., for granting permission to use excerpts from the film "Partisans of Vilna", directed by Joshua Waletzky, USA, 1986.

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The film was produced by Skene Border Films as part of the research project "Remapping Refugee Stories 1933–1953" at the University of Vienna, which shares the stories of 26 Holocaust survivors who escaped persecution. The project is funded by the Foundation Remembrance, Responsibility and Future (EVZ) and the German Federal Ministry of Finance (BMF) as part of the Education Agenda NS-Injustice. More information: https://refugee-stories.org/

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CREDITS Director and Cinematographer Avner Faingulernt Producer and Scriptwriter Hagar Saad Shalom Editor Lev Goltser Mix Yuri Priymenko Music Grigory Lomize