Albert Hanan Kaminski was born in Brussels (Belgium) and at the age of 20, he moved to Israel. He graduated from the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem and from the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam.
During the ’70s, Kaminski created animated openings and short films for kids at the nascent Israeli TV. During the 80’s he started a long collaboration with Children’s Television Workshop in NYC making short animation films for “Sesame Street”. He also worked for “Rehov Sumsum”, the Israeli version, and later, in the ’90s, for “Sharea Sumsum”, the Palestinian version.
Between 1985-88, he moved to Paris where he created a few shorts and his first TV series “Les Betises” for the French TV. During that time he met Paul Grimault (“The King and the Mockingbird”) who became his friend and mentor while working on his first feature film “The Real Shlemiel” (1995). The film was based on short stories by Nobel Prize-winning author Isaac Bashevis Singer, with music by Academy Award winner, Michel Legrand, and lyrics by Emmy Award winner Sheldon Harnick. Later he worked as Animation Director on “Babar, King of the Elephants”.
In 1996, he founded the Animation Department at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem.
Between 1999-2008 he directed the three acclaimed feature films and TV series “Pettson and Findus” (Pulcinella Award in 2001), the feature film “Heidi” and TV series “The Fantastic Flying Journey”, “Felix” and “The Wumblers”.
In 2015 he was honored by the “Pulcinella Career Award” at the Cartoons on the Bay - International Television and Cross-media Animation Festival, in Venice. His latest film “The Legend of King Solomon”, the first Israeli-Hungarian animation feature film for children, released in 2017 is presently worldwide distributed.
Today, Albert Hanan Kaminski resides in Tel Aviv. He is an Associate Professor at the Holon Institute of Technology (HIT) where he heads the Master Program in Integrated Design and teaches in the Department of Film and Television at the Tel Aviv University.