Nancy Spielberg is a slight, friendly and warm blonde, who called herself “Steven’s baby sister” at the Wisconsin Israel Bonds (Development Corporation for Israel) celebration of investors on Nov. 3.
The “Steven” is U.S. feature filmmaker Steven Spielberg, renowned for “Jaws,” “Schindler’s List” and many others.
But “baby sister” has carved out a filmmaking niche for herself, and that was what brought her to the event, held at the Marcus North Shore Theater.
Featured at the event was Spielberg’s documentary “Above and Beyond” (Playmount Productions), which tells the story of the volunteer pilots who fought in Israel’s War of Independence in 1948 and whose service led to the formation of Israel’s air force.
After the showing, Spielberg told the audience of more than 250 that she came to the subject from reading Al Schwimmer’s eulogy in 2011 which told about the volunteer pilots’ missions.
Schwimmer was responsible for obtaining many of the airplanes and other military equipment for Israel. He lost his U.S. citizenship for doing this, but he became an Israeli citizen and founded Israel Aircraft Industries.
“Something possessed me to make the movie,” Spielberg said. “I felt it was min hashmayim [from heaven] and soon all my fears fell to the wayside.”
One of her fears had been that because the former pilots were now advanced in age she might not find enough of them still alive to make the film.
“My biggest regret was that I had not made the film 10 years earlier,” she said. “The ages of those in the film are between 89 and 95.”
She started fund raising, for the $1.5 million that the movie cost to make, in 2011 and began production in 2012. “I raised every penny for it. The story sold itself.” She said she was able to convince a company to do some of the technical aspects pro bono.
She said that she did it predominately herself and that big brother Steven only gave a little. However, she said, the finished film made him cry, and he said, “Producing it was the biggest mitzvah.” He added that he wanted to recommend it to the Cannes Film Festival, she said.
She said that the interviewed pilots “wrote the story. We shot from the hip.”
The film wove together interviews of several of the pilots who had taken part in the war with original photo and film flashbacks of them and of the country in 1948, and a few reconstructions.
According to one of the first volunteers, four pilots flew small planes from Czechoslovakia to Israel in a roundabout way. These aircraft were old and makeshift, some made of parts cannibalized from other planes.
In one now humorous recollection (not so funny at the time), one of the volunteer pilots said that when he was in the air, he had to fumble around to find where the plane’s equipment was.
Each pilot told his story of what motivated him to join. Though threatened with loss of their U.S. citizenship, they weren’t deterred and several stayed in Israel after the war.
Spielberg also spoke about her next Jewish film, a documentary about the Emanuel Ringelblum diaries from the Warsaw Ghetto. She said she is also working on a feature film version of “Above and Beyond.”
Having been raised in a film family, Spielberg worked for a while in the diamond industry, then became involved in several documentaries. She has also founded some charities and is on the board of many others. She now lives in New York City.
Arlene Becker Zarmi is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in more than 40 publications nationwide. She was also the producer and host of a travel TV show for Viacom, and is a Jewish genre and portrait artist.
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