He survived the collapse of two states: Latvia and the Soviet Union, and ended his life in the third - Israel. Frank Hertz with his documentaries left us his vision of some aspects of everyday life in these countries. The director in his works sought to show the real side of events and people as they are, without lies and falsehood.
early years
Frank Herz Wulfovich (also Herzl or Herzel) was born in 1926 in a Jewish family in the Latvian city of Ludza. In addition to him, there were a brother and three sisters in the family. Mom, Mayofis, was a doctor, came from a rabbi family, her cousin was a humorist writer and translator in Yiddish. Father, Wulf Frank, owned a small photo workshop, was an artist and decorator of the Lucin art studio. He organized a folk theater in which performances were performed in Yiddish, and the actors were shoemakers, tailors and teachers. Frank later showed one of his father’s works, the Collage Dream, in the documentary Flashback in the 34th year.
Herzel graduated from a comprehensive school where he was taught in Yiddish, then studied at a Latvian gymnasium. He grew up among the negatives and pictures that his father shot in the pavilion, on the streets and farms of Latvia. The boy loved to collect newspaper clippings about the events of those years: the war in Abyssinia, the war in Spain, the Anschluss of Austria. By the start of the war, he had about 5,000 clippings. Later, Frank Hertz recalled that he had photographs from the Moscow processes of the 30s.
War years
In 1940, Latvia became a Soviet republic. By the beginning of World War II, his mother had died, and in July 1942, Frank Hertz, along with part of his family, went to evacuate to the Urals. However, he lagged behind the train and reached them only six months later. The brother went to the front in 1942.
My father found work in an artel of invalids, and in his free time he wrote scripts. One of the sisters lived with them, her husband died in the first months of the war, the other two sisters, who did not have time to evacuate, fell into the Riga ghetto and were killed in the 44th in the concentration camp of Stutthof. Frank graduated from high school in the city of Revda in the Urals. Frank Herzel was drafted into the army in early 1945.
Military service
He was sent to study at the Kamyshlovsk Military Infantry School, which he graduated in 1947, and at the same time graduated from the All-Union Correspondence Institute of Law in his Sverdlovsk branch. The school was located 150 km from the regional center, Hertz went to the film depot, brought and brought films. Thanks to a good relationship with the commanders, he often managed to stay an extra day to pass the exam or the test. Therefore, he managed to get a law degree in two years. In the army, Frank photographed a lot for wall newspapers and colleagues. After college, he served in the Trans-Baikal Military District until the 52nd year, he was demobilized as a senior lieutenant.
In 1953, he tried to enter the All-Russian State Institute of Cinematography, passed all the exams, but he was not accepted because his sister was in prison for an illegal attempt to leave for Israel. Hertz himself does not regret it, believing that it was too early for him to deal with documentary films.
Photographing life
Since 1953, Hertz worked as a journalist and photographer, first in Vladimir, in the regional newspaper Vladimir Kolkhoznik. The editorial office was located in the office of Zagotzern, under which the tower of the Bogolyubsky Kremlin was converted. He traveled a lot in the surrounding villages, for him it was a school of life, an inexhaustible source of topics.
Then, from 1955, he worked in Riga in the newspapers Rigas Balss and Padomju Jaunatne, where he was responsible for promotional materials. In the evening city newspaper Rigas Balss, his reports of eight shots began to appear, one on each page, a small plot was built from them. Frank says his first films, Salty Bread and Midday, were born from such newspaper reports.
On the road to recognition
In 1959, in the biography of Frank Hertz, the period of work in the Riga film studio began, at first he worked as a photographer, then as a screenwriter and director. The first film shot in his script was the documentary about love "You and Me" (1963), then there was "Report of the Year" (1965). The film “White Bells” (1963), a romantic narrative about the life of a girl in a big city, brought international fame along with the first cinematic awards.
Having gained professional experience, in 1964 he decided to make his first films, which were made in the format of television broadcasts. In 1967, he directed one of his main films, Without Legends, about the life of a famous worker, unlike the official press, shown without embellishment. At first he was banned, but from the end of the 70s students of VGIK studied on it.
In his documentary film, he repeatedly addresses the topic of crime and punishment. Among such tapes are "The Forbidden Zone" (1975), "To the" Dangerous Line "(1984)," The Supreme Court "(1987) and" Once Upon a Time there were Seven Simeons "(1989).
World recognition
In 1988, Frank Hertz arrived at the Jerusalem International Film Festival with the painting "High Court". This was the first Soviet delegation of cultural figures who visited the country after the severance of diplomatic relations. In Israel, he met with his sister and daughter. In 1992, the film "Jewish Street" was shot about the tragic fate of Latvian Jews who were annihilated by the Nazis. In the early paintings "Testament" (1963) and "Sentence" (1966), he already touched on the Holocaust, focusing primarily on the fortitude of people in catastrophic situations.
In 1993 he emigrated to Israel, where in 2002 he founded his own documentary film studio. The first film shot on the Promised Land was a picture, as the director himself determined, about the "mystical power of the weeping wall" - "The Man of the Weeping Wall" (1993). The last work of the Latvian and Israeli documentary filmmaker was a film about the backstage life of the Israeli theater "Gesher" - "Eternal rehearsal. " Frank is the author of 30 films and over 100 publications.