Biography

Lia van Leer was born on August 8, 1924 in Balti, Romania [now Moldova]. She was a producer, known for Third Side of the Coin (1960), Lia (2011) and Cannes Film Festival (1952). She was married to Wim Van Leer. She died on March 13, 2015 in Jerusalem, Israel.

Lia Van Leer served as a member of the Cannes film festival jury in 1983 and was president of the Berlin film fest jury in 1995. In 2004 she was awarded one of her native country's highest honors, the Israel Prize.

Lia Van Leer was born in Romania. She arrived in pre-state Israel as a teenager in 1940, one year before her parents were sent to die in a Nazi concentration camp. She made the Jewish state her home, studying in the early 1940s at Hebrew University, where she met her future husband, Dutch engineer Wim Van Leer. In the 1950s, Lia and Wim Van turned their love of movies into film clubs that later expanded beyond their living room into cinematheque facilities in Haifa, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. The Van Leers' personal collection of movies, acquired from their travels in Europe and the U.S., became the basis of the Israel Film Archive, founded in 1960. Lia van Leer also launched the country's first film archive and the Jerusalem Film Festival in 1984.

Lia van Leer was the founder of the Jerusalem Cinematheque and a pioneering figure in the Israeli film industry.