Ephraim Katz

Who was Ephraim Katz?

Ephraim Katz was a writer, journalist, and filmmaker who devoted his life to gathering the information in his book, The Film Encyclopedia, first published in 1979.

Katz, born in Tel Aviv, studied law and economics at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem. He later studied political science at Hunter College, New York and cinema at New York University.

Ephraim was a film reporter and critic in Israel, before moving to the United States in 1959. Residing in New York, he made television documentaries for CBS, including The Taste of Sunday, one of its first in color, and later for NBC. Katz, Quentin Reynolds, and Zwy Aldouby co-wrote the book Minister of Death: The Adolf Eichmann Story, about Israel's capture of Eichmann.

Ephraim Katz directed many documentaries, educational and industrial films, but his greatest contribution to cinema was his single-volume work, The Film Encyclopedia. One of the most comprehensive critical and historical works on film in print, he single-handedly wrote the entire first edition. The Encyclopedia contains biographical and critical information about many major and minor figures in films including actors, directors, producers, and production people. It also chronicles the history of cinema around the world and contains definitions and descriptions of technical processes and film terminology. A softcover version of the first edition was released by Harper & Row in 1990.