New Film Revives Rare Footage of Hula Valley Before Ecological Disaster
Translated & summarized from Maariv by baba
A new documentary, "Three Photographers in the Swamp," uses rare 1956 footage to depict the Hula Valley before its ecological disaster. Photographers Werner Braun, Edgar Hirschbein, and Arie Volk spent a year documenting the area, leaving their families behind. The film highlights the environmental consequences of the drainage project and features interviews with the photographers' daughters, who recall their fathers' dedication and the creation of the footage.
The story in 6 lines · by baba
- A new documentary revives rare 1956 footage of the Hula Valley before its ecological disaster.
- Three photographers, Werner Braun, Edgar Hirschbein, and Arie Volk, spent a year documenting the Hula Valley.
- The Hula Valley drainage project, initially seen as Zionist, became Israel's largest ecological disaster.
- The film showcases the photographers' creative methods, including a homemade pelican camera.
- The photographers' daughters shared personal memories of their fathers' year-long absence and dedication.
- Directors reconstructed the film's sound, aiming to evoke longing for the lost Hula Lake.
A new documentary film, "Three Photographers in the Swamp," brings to life rare color footage shot in 1956 by three Jerusalem-based photographers who left their families for a year to document the Hula Valley before its drainage. Werner Braun, Edgar Hirschbein, and Arie Volk, all new immigrants with families, embarked on this project, which has now been re-edited and contextualized to highlight the ecological disaster that followed.
The drainage of the Hula Valley, which began in the early 1950s and lasted about eight years, was then considered a pioneering Zionist endeavor aimed at creating agricultural land and preventing water evaporation. However, it later became known as Israel's greatest ecological disaster, leading to soil fires, the extinction of plant and animal species, and pollution of the Sea of Galilee.
The photographers' children, Tamar Levy Hirschbein and Orah Volk Ettinger, shared their memories of their fathers' year-long absence. Levy Hirschbein recalled her childhood longing for her father, Edgar, and the difficulty of communication without mobile phones. Ettinger remembered visiting the photographers at Kibbutz Ayelet HaShachar and noted that even then, kibbutz members recognized the mistake of draining the lake and welcomed the documentation.
The film showcases the photographers' ingenuity, with Levy Hirschbein describing her father Edgar's inventive methods, such as building a plywood pelican with a camera in its neck to get close to the birds. Their ambition to sell the film abroad, even attracting interest from Walt Disney for animal footage, was ultimately set aside as they decided not to break up the documentary.
Directors Racheli and Eyal Ben Moshe worked to reconstruct the sound for the film, as the original footage lacked audio. They aimed to tell the story of Israel's first ecological disaster and evoke a sense of longing for the lost lake. The daughters expressed deep emotion seeing their fathers' work revived, with Levy Hirschbein having donated her father's extensive film reels and photographs to the Jerusalem Cinematheque after his death in 2006.