Aviva Kempner '76 will receive the 2011 Washington Jewish Film Festival (WJFF) Visionary Award on Saturday, December 10th at the Aaron and Cecile Goldman Theater. The annual award recognizes and pays tribute to courage, creativity and insight in presenting the diversity of the Jewish experience through the moving image. The evening will include the 25thanniversary screening of Partisans of Vilna, a post-film discussion and reception. In conjunction with the award, the WJFF is presenting a retrospective of Kempner’s films. Previous WJFF Visionary Award recipients include Charles (z”l) and Grace Guggenheim, Michael Veerhoven and Daniel Burman. For more information and to purchase tickets visit WJFF.
Aviva Kempner is a writer, director, and producer. Some of her films include Partisans of Vilna, The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg, andYoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg. While devoted to documentaries, she also wrote and directed the short tragicomedy, Today I Vote for My Joey.
Kempner is currently making a documentary called The Rosenwald Schools about
Chicago philanthropist Julius Rosenwald’s partnership with Booker T.
Washington that led to establishing over 5,300 schools for African
Americans in America’s rural South. She also co-wrote and is
co-producing the dramatic script Navajo Nation.
In 1990, Kempner founded the WJFF, one of the first Jewish film festivals in the nation. She has written film reviews for the past 25 years and has authored several chapters for published books. She was the recipient of the 2009 San Francisco Jewish Film Festival’s Freedom of Expression Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, DC Mayor’s Art Award, WIFV Women of Vision Award and Media Arts Award from the National Foundation for Jewish Culture. She is also a voting rights advocate for the District of Columbia.
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