Jerusalem Cinematheque restoring film archive, ‘Siege’
Three years ago, Jerusalem Cinematheque set out a plan to restore and preserve more than 30,000 Israeli films within its archive. Today the immense project continues, as the company prepares to showcase Gilberto Tofano’s 1969 debut feature Siege at this year’s Jerusalem Film Festival.
The plan was the brainchild of Noa Regev, executive director of Cinematheque since 2014. Regev’s “first impulse” upon taking the top spot, she revealed, was to “set about saving all these movies” from being lost to history forever.
Cinematheque’s laudable goal was met with some scepticism, and it’s not hard to see why. The company had originally proposed to restore Siege more than three years ago, but met many difficulties along the way. The biggest problem was the financial cost: at least €22,000 to restore each feature. (Yikes!)
However, the team continued onwards and kept it in the back of their minds, says Meir Russo, the festival’s archive manager, who calls Siege an incredibly “unique film”. Regev agrees: “Siege should receive much more attention in Israeli culture. It was one of the first films to deal with war and mourning from a female perspective.”
The restoration process sat on the backburner until February 2017, when the master negative for the film was finally shipped to Cinelab Romania in Bucharest, where it was scanned into digital 4K before being sent back to Israel for restoration at post-production house Opus Productions. Individual reels having to be sent back and forth across the world are just one of many restoration costs in such a project.
That’s the crux of this story, but it’s a bigger one than Siege alone: the more than 30,000 films housed within Cinematheque’s Israel Film Archive is so large it will take at least five to seven years for the entirety of it to be digitized. Regev claims it houses “95% of all Israeli fiction and documentary films”.
The plan has been bolstered heavily by Cinematheque’s recent acquisition of digitization technology, establishing the organization as the first Israeli lab perhaps able to perform the complex procedure entirely in-house.
Cinematheque’s aim is worthy of commendation; its archive is a treasure hoard on the grandest scale, consisting of such items as the Lumiere Brothers’ 1896 film Leaving Jerusalem By Railway, along with a collection of historical newsreels. The archival team are quick to admit they haven’t catalogued the entire collection, a claim proven by the recent discovery of long-buried behind-the-scenes footage from the production of Siege itself, which they have since restored and are set to showcase alongside the film during its screening at the Jerusalem Film Festival.
The restoration process for Siege, set to screen as part of the Jerusalem Film Festival on July 19, was supported by United Kingdom Films and the Rabinovich Foundation. The screening will be attended by cinematographer David Gurfinkel (Over The Top), who worked on the original and oversaw part of the restoration work.
Archive Scale and Timeline
The original five-to-seven-year estimate now sits beside measurable outcomes. Digitization advanced enough for a public platform to launch around 2020. Collections are described as roughly four thousand hours of analogue footage, with work still moving forward alongside the new access channels. The scale remains vast, yet the project has shifted from a single forward plan to a rolling process that balances preservation with immediate public use.
Siege Restoration Details
The workflow for Siege followed the path laid out in 2017: master negative to Cinelab Romania for 4K scanning, then return to Opus Productions in Israel for final restoration. The completed version screened that same year at the Jerusalem Film Festival and later appeared in the Cannes Classics section. Behind-the-scenes material discovered during the process was restored and paired with the feature, giving audiences a fuller picture of the original production.
Leadership and Vision
Noa Regev served as executive director and CEO from roughly 2014 until 2022, when she moved to the Israel Film Fund. Meir Russo has remained a steady presence in archive management, keeping institutional knowledge intact. The transition did not slow the core work; restoration projects and festival programming have continued under the current structure with the same emphasis on accessibility and long-term preservation.
Historical Holdings
The archive’s early cinema material includes the Lumière Brothers’ 1897 production Leaving Jerusalem By Railway, sometimes dated 1896 in older catalogues. It sits among historical newsreels and other footage that together document the first decades of motion pictures in the region. These holdings give context to the larger collection and show how far back the preservation mandate reaches.
Digitization Technology
The in-house lab established in 2017 marked the first time a professional Israeli facility could handle the full range of restoration and digitization steps on site. That capability supported both the Siege project and the broader push to move analogue material into digital form. It also enabled the later launch of public streaming, turning technical capacity into wider access.
Public Access and Streaming Platform
Over five hundred films and more than ten thousand archival clips are now available through the archive’s online platform. The launch around 2020 aligned with lockdown conditions and gave audiences direct entry to material that had previously required physical visits. Search tools and curated selections have turned preservation work into everyday viewing options without removing the need for continued digitization of remaining reels.
ReFILM Restoration Film Festival
The annual ReFILM program presents restored titles to local and international audiences, turning technical work into scheduled public events. Editions in 2024 and 2025 included both well-known features and lesser-seen titles, widening the conversation around archival care. The festival format also creates space for technicians and curators to discuss methods and challenges in front of engaged viewers.
Archives Night and Vault Tours
Archives Night events open the vaults for guided tours, lab demonstrations, and screenings of restored prints. The 2026 edition featured titles such as Life According to Agfa alongside visits to active workstations. These evenings give the public a direct look at the physical and digital steps involved in keeping the collection alive.
Leadership Transition and Institutional Continuity
Regev’s departure in 2022 did not interrupt the pipeline of restorations or the calendar of public programs. Current leadership has maintained the same priorities while expanding outreach through ReFILM and Archives Night. The original vision of saving the archive has become a sustained institutional habit rather than a single campaign.
The archive’s growth from a closed vault to an active public resource shows how steady funding and technical upgrades can shift preservation from rescue work to routine cultural maintenance. Siege stands as an early success within that larger effort, while the streaming platform and festival programming keep the collection visible long after each reel returns from the scanner.
