Filming Words – Nurith Aviv: Screenings and Conversations, Day 2

Join us for a screening of Sacred Tongue, Profane Language (2008), with Nurith Aviv in conversation with Ofer Dynes, Aviya Kushner, Jacques Lezra, and Moulie Vidas

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

Hebrew was the language of Scripture, liturgy, and rabbinic commentaries for centuries. Then, by force of national and political will, it was reborn as a language of daily life in the early 20th century. Writers and artists from Israel explore their intimate, often conflicted relationship with Hebrew’s layered past, reflecting on what has been forgotten or repressed and what needs to resurface. Their confessions overlap and part, as the film allows no single version of this history prevails.

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.