Israel: A Right to Live (lost BBC documentary film; 1967)

A BBC map showing Israel before and after the Six Day War.

Status: Lost

Israel: A Right to Live (also known as Israeli) is a lost 1967 BBC documentary film about the Six Day War directed by John Schlesinger and produced by Harry Saltzman. The film is said to have been shot in Israel a few days in June after the war ended and the film's subject was said to be about the war from an Israeli's point of view.

Content and Production

According to the British Film Institute, the film's subject was about the Six Day War and "examines the reactions to the event and establishes the historical context from an Israeli perspective."

According to William J. Mann's 2006 biography of Schlesinger titled Edge of Midnight: The Life of John Schlesinger, he was interested to make a documentary film about the Six Day War with writer Wolf Mankovitz and he flew to Israel to shoot footage for the documentary. His journey there was described as "quite moving, a sense of reclaiming his Jewish heritage" and it was his first time he ever visited the country.

Availability

There are some conflicting claims about whether or not the documentary was completed, as Alan Rosenthal's 2000 book Jerusalem, Take One!: Memoirs of a Jewish Filmmaker claims that the film was completed but no one liked the final result and had a few private showings, while William J. Mann's book claims that the film was never completed due to Schlesinger's reported "creative differences" with the BBC.

As of the writing of this article, there are no known surviving prints of the film, no surviving still images, and a full script of the film has not been made available to the public.