Wim Van Leer; Pilot and Founder of First Israeli Film Archive

Wim Van Leer, 79, a scion of a Dutch-Israeli philanthropic family. Van Leer served as a pilot with Britain’s Royal Air Force in World War II. He immigrated to Israel and was a pilot in the Israeli Air Force. He became a leading industrialist and was best known for establishing Israel’s first film archive, the Jerusalem Cinematheque. Van Leer won the Berlin Film Festival’s Golden Bear award for directing the documentary “The Third Side of the Coin” in 1964. His family endowed the Van Leer Institute, a research center in Jerusalem that promotes Arab-Jewish dialogue. In Jerusalem on Tuesday of unreported causes.