Eli Adler is a professional cinematographer and director with more than thirty years of experience in documentary filmmaking. His work has been recognised with numerous awards, including a CINE Golden Eagle and two National Emmy Awards. As the son of a Holocaust survivor, his career has been closely connected to films that engage with Holocaust memory, testimony, and historical responsibility.
Among his Holocaust related works are Hope Out of the Ashes (1985), a short documentary narrated by Liv Ullmann about the San Francisco Holocaust Memorial sculpted by George Segal, Loosening the Grip (1999), filmed in Berlin and Auschwitz, and One Day in Auschwitz (2015), produced by Shoah Foundation to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. Adler was also a prolific contributor to the Shoah Foundation Interview Program in the San Francisco Bay Area, recording survivor testimonies as part of its long term archival mission.
Adler spent his formative years in Skokie from 1959 until his family moved to nearby Wilmette in 1967. Although he was no longer living there during the years when the neo Nazi threat emerged, he maintained a strong personal connection to the village. The 2009 dedication of the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center in Skokie, together with Chicago Tribune journalist Howard Reich’s article Memories of the Skokie That Was, inspired the original blueprint for Surviving Skokie.
Surviving Skokie received the 2015 Mill Valley Film Festival Audience Favourite Gold Award in the Valley of the Docs category, further affirming Adler’s commitment to documentary filmmaking that combines historical inquiry with deeply personal storytelling.
