The Visual Center is a digital film library and comprehensive database of Holocaust-related cinema information and reference material. You are welcome to perform searches in the Visual Center Online Catalogue. Please use the User Coment tab of each film record to send us your comments, requests and further information inquiries.
Visitors to the Visual Center may select films for research and viewing at one of the personal computer stations located on our premises. Professional consultations for filmmakers, academic researchers and the general public are available without appointment Sunday - Thursday from 9:00-17:00.
Copyright law prohibits us from providing copies of the films in our collection; however, we can assist you in useful information for your specific needs.
Public screenings of films from our collection take place at the Center in conjunction with conferences and other activities. Events open to the general public are advertised beforehand in the local media.
For information about copies of videotaped testimonies from Yad Vashem’s Testimony or USC collections (“Spielberg testimonies”), please refer to Testimonies Collections - Yad Vashem and the The USC Shoah Foundation Visual History video testimonies.
If you would like to obtain a copy of a film catalogued at the Visual Center, or, if you are a filmmaker and would like to use footage from anything you have seen here, whether archival, documentary, or dramatic footage, we will do our best to refer you to the copyright holder or distributor of the film. Please use the user comment tab of each record to send us requests.
If you would like to screen a film you have found in our collection in its entirety before a group, (e.g. at a teacher training seminar or in the classroom), this is considered a “public screening”, even if you do not charge an admission fee. To do so, you will need to contact the copyright owner or distributor of the film to obtain a copy of the film on DVD and to clear copyright. A fee may be involved. In most cases, the Visual Center online catalogue lists the copyright holder and/or distibutor of the films. You can search the web to find their contact info. Should you require our assistance for distributors’ or copyright holders’ contact details, send us a request via the “user comment” tab in the film record. You should take into account that obtaining the necessary authorization to screen the film in public may take up to a month of email correspondence and telephone follow-up on your part.
If you would like to hold a screening of one of the films in our collection in the Visual Center’s 50-seat theater, please submit your program idea to Liat Benhabib, Director of the Visual Center, at visual.center@yadvashem.org.il. The Visual Center is welcome to independent educational programming ideas for groups, but it is not a theater that books screenings for private groups per se. Please write to us well in advance of the date of your program, letting us know what it is about, what film or films you would like to screen, how many people you are inviting, and if you are charging them an organizational admission fee. This will allow us to clear copyright for a public screening on our premises. This can take up to a month and may involve a fee (payable by the group organizers) to the copyright holder or distributor.
If you have made a film about the Shoah or a related subject we would be happy to include it in the Visual Center’s collection. For information about giving us a film please see Depositing Your Film in the Visual Center Collection.
