Return to Zion (1920)

Overview

Return to Zion is Yaacov Ben-Dov’s third film and the first motion picture the JNF had acquired for distribution amongst Jews around the world. The film, thought to have been lost, was unearthed in Prague in 1989 and in the 1990s, a copy was handed over to the Israeli Film Archive at the Jerusalem Cinematheque. The film, among other things, features the imprisonment of Ze’ev Jabotinsky and his friends in Acre; Mandatory Palestine’s First High Commissioner, Herbert Samuel’s tours of Jaffa and Jerusalem; pioneering Jewish immigrants and their budding agricultural, rural and urban communities across the land; archaeological excavations in Tiberias and Jerusalem, and rare footage of early-days Tel Aviv.