Ephraim Katz (11 March 1932 – 2 August 1992) was a writer, journalist and filmmaker who devoted his life to gathering the information in his book,The Film Encyclopedia,^[1] first published in 1979.

Katz, born inTel Aviv, studied law and economics at theHebrew University,Jerusalem. He later studied political science atHunter College, New York and cinema atNew York University.

Ephraim was a film reporter and critic inIsrael, before moving to theUnited States in 1959. Residing inNew York City, he made television documentaries forCBS, includingThe Taste of Sunday, one of its first in color, and later forNBC. Katz,Quentin Reynolds, and Zwy Aldouby co-wrote the bookMinister of Death: The Adolf Eichmann Story (1960), about Israel's capture ofEichmann.

Ephraim Katz directed many documentaries, educational and industrial films, but his greatest contribution to cinema was his single-volume work,The Film Encyclopedia (1st hardcover edition, 1979). One of the most comprehensive critical and historical works on film in print, he single-handedly wrote the entire first edition. TheEncyclopedia contains biographical and critical information about many major and minor figures in films including actors, directors, producers, and production people. It also chronicles the history of cinema around the world and contains definitions and descriptions of technical processes and film terminology. A softcover version of the first edition was released by Harper & Row in 1990.

Katz and his wife Helen had two daughters, Alyssa and Laura. He died in New York City ofemphysema on August 2, 1992.

At the time of his death, Katz was in the process of updatingThe Film Encyclopedia. The second edition was eventually completed by two colleagues, Fred Klein and Ronald Dean Nolen, and released in 1994. Klein and Nolen continued to revise and update Katz's work as needed, with a 3rd edition released in 1998; a 4th edition in 2001, and a 5th edition in 2005. Nolen alone revised and issued a 6th edition of Katz's work, published in 2008. A 7th edition (ISBN 0062026151) was released in 2012.

• New York Times obituary, August 8, 1992.

• 1932 births
• 1992 deaths
• American male journalists
• 20th-century American journalists
• American military writers
• Hebrew University of Jerusalem alumni
• Hunter College alumni
• Tisch School of the Arts alumni
• American film historians
• American people of Israeli descent
• Jewish American historians
• Film theorists
• 20th-century Israeli journalists
• Writers from New York (state)
• 20th-century American historians
• 20th-century American male writers
• American male non-fiction writers

• Articles with short description
• Short description matches Wikidata
• Articles with hCards