In one unsettling and ironic moment, which came to be one of the most difficult moments of his life, director Tzvika Vloch of Givatayim was thrown before his own camera lens. He had been working on his “True Moments” television documentary series for eight years.

He accompanied an eight year old boy from Lod who suffered a severe head injury following a car accident, a Cypriot heart patient who was flown in on an impossible mission to get a heart transplant in Israel, a 16 year old boy with a replaced heart valve whose condition deteriorated until he passed away, and an adorable four year old girl that came to Israel from Cyprus, with her entire family, due to convulsions.

He accompanied the organs sent from Cyprus for transplantation in an Israeli hospital and, in one case, traveled all the way to China with two doctors. He spent dozens of shooting hours within operating rooms, recording sights that only the medical staff grows accustomed to and documenting families in the most dramatic moments of their lives and those of their loved ones.

In each of those cases, he was a bystander – until one year ago, when everything overturned. Ironically, Vloch himself contracted cancer during the shooting process and, for the first time in his life, moved to stand in front of the camera.

It all started in 1998, when his father contracted a heart disease and was hospitalized in the “Sheba” Tel HaShomer Hospital for long periods of time. Vloch, a commercial photographer/director and photographer on the Israeli equivalent to “Candid Camera”, found himself discovering a work full of drama – the less humorous kind.

“While spending time with my father, I saw the hospital, as I always do, as a movie”, he says. “I was suddenly exposed to many human stories. I wanted to crate. I turned to the administration and requested permission to film, without knowing where I was heading. The hospital authorized me to do whatever I wanted; I wasn’t accompanied by spokespeople or anyone of the sort. They let me grow with the project”.

That’s how Vloch encountered Dafi, a beautiful and disarming young woman with Cystic Fibrosis, who waited for a lung transplant for eleven months. In his film “Dafi – A True Story” (1998), Vloch followed the unbearable wait for a transplant and, upon the arrival of the donation, the elation in her family – on the one hand – and the sorrow in the family of the donor, a soldier killed in a car accident.

The film, aired on Channel 1, reported high ratings and positive reviews, and record enrollment in the Israeli organ donor plan was reported following its airing. “After editing the film on Dafi, a good friend of mine – Ronit Popper – asked me to come to “Spivak”, a club for the handicapped located in Ramat Gan”, he remembers.

“I got there one day and walked into the gym. I saw a group of disabled athletes, sitting on wheelchairs, dribbling the ball and shooting hoops. I thought to myself that it must be very difficult and that it could be any one of us on those chairs. I was approached by Haim Lev, who shook my hand and invited me to watch him. His openness and cooperation attracted me to the story and I stayed with it for two years”.

That is how “Haim Lev – The Story of a World Champion” was born, a film that demonstrates how Lev copes with his disability, presents his victories in international tennis competitions and highlights his love story with Sharon. “”We celebrated his 34^th birthday this week; they have a charming son and daughter, and a loving relationship. You’re looking at a man whose life was ruined at a young age by an operation gone wrong, and he is a person who is very easy and comfortable to be with – very strong”.

“I stumbled across the difficult stories by chance. But I stayed with them out of choice. The human story always wins. By nature, I am a curious man. The trials and tribulations that I was allowed to take part in are definitely not the kind that we are accustomed to.

“If I hadn’t bonded with the characters in a manner that would enable me to accompany them over time, I would not be able to keep at it. I accompanied Haim for two years. There is a bathtub scene in the film. A scene that was very difficult for me to shoot, on a personal level. I felt that I was invading his privacy, without being sure that I should. I think that it provided the viewer with a different perspective to the difficult world of the handicapped individual – how tasks that are simple for us, are difficult for him”.

While shooting, Vloch was also forced to face unpleasant moments of which there were quite a few. In the film on Dafi, for example, there is a scene that presents the lung transplant process, during which the physician presents the complete lung to the camera.

“At first, I was indeed worried that I would not be able to cope with the operating room learned how to get along. Looking at things through the camera viewer make them a                   bit easier to handle. Being in an operating room is not easy. It’s not easy to go out to a family that is trying to pump you for information.

“Right from the beginning, there is an agreement with the family that all medical testimony will be provided by the medical staff only. You obtain a great deal of information and you have to maintain boundaries, otherwise you lose your identity”.

“Unlike a doctor or nurse who undergo some kind of preparation, you are not only sucked in by what you see, you also take the sights home with you. I feel that beyond the great story that I’m getting, I am also getting great people. Luckily, I work with editors who know what to do and how to filter the material that I give them, so I have the privilege of remembering that I am making a movie. There are very few barriers during the creative process. When you have the camera on your shoulder, you can do everything, otherwise you can’t bring the viewer with the results you were sent to achieve”.

“I think so. But the long presence by the camera leads to a situation in which it becomes part of their natural environment. The same person is shooting all of the time. At a certain point, they get used to it. I think that, to some extent, the camera became their friend and some kind of source for relief”.

“Introducing yourself and asking for cooperation is not an easy stage. There are always initial suspicions. Sharon, Haim’s girlfriend, didn’t want to be on film at first, but she eventually opened up to the camera too.

“There was one instance of a 16 year old boy that I accompanied to valve replacement surgery. There were complications during the operation. The complications did not result from something that the doctor had done, but just because they sometimes occur in cases like these. It was very hard for me. I know what the family outside is waiting to hear, and the news is not going to be good. When the doctor told them what happened and began preparing the parents for tragedy, I appreciated the doctor saying to me: “Let’s go talk to the family”. If he hadn’t said that, I would not have dared.

“It was an 18-hour procedure; the boy went into the heart transplant waiting list and died while waiting. I am human and I surely did not want that kind of ending. And then I asked myself: “What now? Should I air the film or not?” I went to the family, which made me one of their own, and they said that they trust my judgment. Beyond being a story, I consider it to be a film for promoting awareness to organ donations”.

In the world of documentary creation, reality exceeds imagination – at least in Veloch’s case. In the middle of the shooting process, as if a cynical director decided on a dramatic twist of fate, the director became part of the film itself. Veloch: “I began feeling bad 18 months ago, suffering from fevers, terrible sweats. I felt exhausted. I went to the doctor and said: “I bet you’re going to tell me that I have cancer”. “I underwent all of the tests and two weeks later she said that I had mumps and that it would pass. I continued to feel bad and went to see a general practitioner that was filling in for my doctor, who went on maternity leave. He referred me to an ENT (Ear Nose Throat) specialist who sent me to get a biopsy. 

“Despite his request, the general practitioner said: ‘You have mumps, there’s no reason for you to remove your head for it’. I went home, happily, but continued to feel bad. I returned to the doctor with the thought of taking antibiotics, but he sent me to the emergency room.

“I was so scared that I didn’t ask what I had. I underwent a biopsy and was called to the hematological department two weeks later. At the hospital, the doctor said: ‘You have cancer and it’s malignant’. I was in shock. I found myself wandering around the Givatayim mall, looking at nice things and with no desire to buy. I thought to myself: from now on, I don’t have to buy a thing. I realized that my life had changed”.

Veloch’s lymphoma was detected at the highest degree of severity. One week after being notified of the disease, he was hospitalized after one of his lungs had failed and his bone marrow had been ruined.

“It’s a little different when it’s about you, but it is quite possible. There is no doubt that when I looked at Haim, whose life changed completely at 16 and who promoted himself, I said to myself that if he can then I can too. That’s the beauty of these films. My encounter with people who cope with a difficult physical reality enabled me to take things in proportion.

“When you see people who are in terrible distress and who manage to overcome it, you feel energized. In addition, my acquaintance with the place helped me get around within the hospital”.

“I have been involved in documentation my entire life. At a certain point, the camera becomes your friend. I felt that it would be the right thing for the series and that I actually gained a new subject. I had long hair at the time. Ronit Popper brought her friend, a hair stylist, because I was about to get my first chemo treatment and I opted for gradual change over sudden shock. The entire family came in with video cameras and documented the haircut”.

“I took it all the way, including the tests during the process of chemotherapy. A bone marrow transplant is not the same as surgery. Everything is intravenous. In cinematic terms, it is not very interesting, but my exposure in the hospital was unconstrained, just as I demanded from my subjects – there were no limits for me either”.

“The only thing I said to my nephew Yaron was: ‘You know where the rough cuts are. If I am not here one day, you know how to complete the project’. I knew I would be going through a very difficult ordeal.”

“The day before I was discharged following the bone marrow transplant, I said to the doctor: ‘If you’re letting me go, it must mean that I beat the cancer’. He smiled and said: ‘a Western medicine defines victory after five years of remission’. I smiled back and said: ‘Can you promise me that you’ll be here in five years?’ That is how I decided to look at things to make it easier”.

“Very much so. One of the things that captivated me with Haim is his optimism. Dafi’s optimism was loud and clear and in my case, too, I didn’t consider any possibility but victory”.