Aviva Kempner

Directing

Aviva Kempner

Born

1946-12-23 (79)

Place of birth

Berlin, Germany

Known for

Directing

Credits

9 titles

Aviva Kempner (born December 23, 1946) is a German-born American filmmaker. Her documentaries investigate non-stereotypical images of Jews in history and focus on the untold stories of Jewish people. She is most well known for The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg. A child of Holocaust survivor Helen Ciesla, a Polish citizen, and Harold Kempner, a US Army officer, Kempner was born in Berlin, Germany, after World War II. Her family history inspired her to create her first documentary, Partisans of Vilna (1986). She grew up in Detroit and has a brother, Jonathan. Kempner lives in Washington, DC and is an activist for voting rights for the District of Columbia. She was a member of the Class of…

Known for

Imagining the Indian: The Fight Against Native American Mascoting poster
8.0

Examining the movement that is ending the use of Native American names, logos, and mascots in the world of sports and beyond.

Imagining the Indian: The Fight Against Native American Mascoting

2021

The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg poster
6.2

The story of Baseball Hall-of-Famer Hank Greenberg, the first major Jewish baseball star in the Major Leagues, is told through archival film footage and interviews with fans, former teammates, friends, and family. As a great first baseman with the Detroit Tigers, Greenberg endured antisemitism and became a hero and source of inspiration throughout the Jewish community, not incidentally leading the Tigers to Major League dominance in the 1930s.

The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg

1998

No artwork available
NR

The Rosenwald Schools by Aviva Kempner is a documentary about how Chicago philanthropist Julius Rosenwald, the son of an immigrant peddler who rose to head Sears, partnered with Booker T. Washington to build 5,400 Southern schools in African American communities in the early 1900s during the Jim Crow era.

Rosenwald

2015

Promises to Keep poster
6.3

Promises to Keep follows agitator Snyder and the Community for Creative Non-Violence by showing film-fragments, news-bulletin images from records, and newspaper headlines about the fight to force the government to live up to their promise to provide the homeless of Washington D.C. with proper shelter.

Promises to Keep

1988

Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg poster
4.2

The story of the actor, writer and broadcasting pioneer, Gertrude Berg.

Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg

2009

The Spy Behind Home Plate poster
5.0

The first feature-length documentary about Moe Berg, the enigmatic and brilliant baseball player who turned spy for the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during World War II.

The Spy Behind Home Plate

2019

Behind the camera

Imagining the Indian: The Fight Against Native American Mascoting poster
8.0

Examining the movement that is ending the use of Native American names, logos, and mascots in the world of sports and beyond.

Imagining the Indian: The Fight Against Native American Mascoting

2021

The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg poster
6.2

The story of Baseball Hall-of-Famer Hank Greenberg, the first major Jewish baseball star in the Major Leagues, is told through archival film footage and interviews with fans, former teammates, friends, and family. As a great first baseman with the Detroit Tigers, Greenberg endured antisemitism and became a hero and source of inspiration throughout the Jewish community, not incidentally leading the Tigers to Major League dominance in the 1930s.

The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg

1998

The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg poster
6.2

The story of Baseball Hall-of-Famer Hank Greenberg, the first major Jewish baseball star in the Major Leagues, is told through archival film footage and interviews with fans, former teammates, friends, and family. As a great first baseman with the Detroit Tigers, Greenberg endured antisemitism and became a hero and source of inspiration throughout the Jewish community, not incidentally leading the Tigers to Major League dominance in the 1930s.

The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg

1998

No artwork available
NR

The Rosenwald Schools by Aviva Kempner is a documentary about how Chicago philanthropist Julius Rosenwald, the son of an immigrant peddler who rose to head Sears, partnered with Booker T. Washington to build 5,400 Southern schools in African American communities in the early 1900s during the Jim Crow era.

Rosenwald

2015

Promises to Keep poster
6.3

Promises to Keep follows agitator Snyder and the Community for Creative Non-Violence by showing film-fragments, news-bulletin images from records, and newspaper headlines about the fight to force the government to live up to their promise to provide the homeless of Washington D.C. with proper shelter.

Promises to Keep

1988

Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg poster
4.2

The story of the actor, writer and broadcasting pioneer, Gertrude Berg.

Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg

2009

The Spy Behind Home Plate poster
5.0

The first feature-length documentary about Moe Berg, the enigmatic and brilliant baseball player who turned spy for the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during World War II.

The Spy Behind Home Plate

2019

Partisans of Vilna poster
8.8

This extraordinary film tells the story of the men and women who formed the Jewish partisan movement in Vilna, Lithuania, during World War II. Using rare archival film footage dating from 1939 to 1944 and contemporary interviews with 40 partisan survivors (including Abba Kovner, a founder of the partisan movement and one of Israel's leading poets) the film explores the difficulties of organizing under the anarchic conditions of the ghetto.

Partisans of Vilna

1986

A Pocketful of Miracles: A Tale of Two Siblings poster
NR

Berlin born Aviva Kempner chronicles her mother Hanka and uncle Dudek Ciesla's lives before and during World War II

A Pocketful of Miracles: A Tale of Two Siblings

2023