Filming Words–Nurith Aviv Retrospective: Screenings and Conversations, Day 1

A screening of Translating (2011), with Nurith Aviv in conversation with Aviya Kushner, Jacques Lezra, and James Redfield

Co-sponsored by Fordham’s Center for Jewish Studies, Centro Primo Levi, and Fordham’s Center on Religion and Culture

In this Babelic film, translators from different corners of the world speak in their own tongues, recounting their encounters with Hebrew literature across the centuries—from the Midrash and medieval poetry to contemporary fiction. They speak with fervor, revealing how translation can be an act of both devotion and defiance, sometimes bending the very structures of their own languages to carry across the soul of another.

Tickets for all four events in this series are free for Fordham University’s and Centro Primo Levi’s guests who register by April 15. Starting on April 16th, tickets will be available for sale for $20 or $10 (students and seniors discount).

Nurith Aviv (Tel Aviv, Mandatory Palestine, 1945) has directed ​​18 documentary films. Her works investigate language and move lyrically through the landscapes, collective myths, and intimate narratives that shape humans’ ways of being together. The first woman to be a director of photography in France, she has shot a hundred fiction and documentary films with directors such as Agnès Varda, Amos Gitai, René Allio, and Jacques Doillon. She has received important prizes, including the Edouard Glissant Prize (2009) and the Grand Prix de l’Académie française (2019). Her works have been shown in multiple retrospectives in Paris, including a week-long one last month. She has been the subject of a movie (Woman with a Camera by Zohar Behrendt, 2023) and now of a book (Filmer la Parole, 2025).

This tribute, the fruit of a collaboration between the Fordham University Center for Jewish Studies, the Primo Levi Center, and the Fordham Center on Religious and Culture, is the first of its kind in New York City. It will gather Aviv’s long-time fans, newcomers to her work, and lovers of language from all backgrounds to celebrate through images and words this exceptional director as she turns 80.