Michael Kovner | A Portrait
Updated: 1 day ago
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.
--------------
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/
--------------
Introductory words on the film portraits
The three short film portraits each tell the personal story of an individual who belongs to a family marked by the legacy of persecution, discrimination and suffering during the years of Nazi terror in Europe and its aftermath. These are stories of remembering, of pain carried across generations, and of the ongoing effort to understand and cope with that past.
While each story stands on its own, there are three key themes that link them – threads that tie individual experiences to a shared historical and emotional reality.
Intergenerational impact of the Holocaust
All three individuals portrayed are part of the so-called “after the Shoah generation”, some being grandchildren of those who survived. Their lives are shaped not by direct experience, but by inherited memories: stories of trauma, fear, and silence. These films explore how such legacies continue to shape the present, raising complex questions of identity, memory, and resilience.
Art as a means of coping and expression
All three films portray individuals who turn to art – painting, graphic writing, or acting – to cope with a past that still causes pain and continues to haunt them. Art becomes a way not only to build resilience, but also to explore the limits of human ability to deal with inhuman violence and cruelty. In this sense, art may preserve the incomparable nature of traumatic violence and at the same time convey it.
Remembering the Holocaust after October 7
The films were produced after the Hamas attacks on civilians in Israel on October 7, 2023. For both the portrayed individuals and the Israeli filmmakers, it is essential to reflect on historical trauma in the context of current anti-Semitic violence. The films remind us how past and present are connected — and how people continue to search for ways to live with the effects of violence, then and now.
--------------
CREDITS Director and Cinematographer: Avner Faingulernt |Producer and Scriptwriter: Hagar Saad Shalom ||Mix: Yuri Priymenko |Music: Grigory Lomize.
Comments