Leonard Retel Helmrich

Quick Facts

Full Name	Leonard Retel Helmrich
Occupation	Film Director
Date Of Birth	Aug 16, 1959(1959-08-16)
Age	65
Birthplace	Tilburg
Country	Netherlands
Birth City	North Brabant
Horoscope	Leo

Leonard Retel Helmrich Biography

Leonard Retel Helmrich is one of the most popular and richest Film Director who was born on August 16, 1959 in Tilburg, North Brabant, Netherlands. Leonard Retel Helmrich graduated from the Dutch Film and Television Academy in 1986. The following year, in 1990 He made his first movie, The Phoenix Mystery. The first documentary he made, Moving Objects (1991) was given the Special Jury Award for the Best Artist-Project at the International Golden Gate Film Festival in San Francisco. Retel Helmrich created his own style of cinema based on a principle is his own and has been dubbed “Single Shot Cinema”. After the completion of this motion picture Moving Objects, he decided to go to Indonesia which is where the parents of his family were born in the hope of showing everyone across the globe the happenings in this stunning and complex country. He found that the authority of the president Suharto was diminishing. In 1995, he filmed an film about Suharto as well as his wife at their Jakartan palace. Then, he traveled to Solo in central Java to film a protest of protest against Suharto’s regime. Suharto regime. While he was there, his arrest by the police and charged with being an Western spy. Thanks to the Dutch Embassy, and the help of Anton, his brother Anton who was in Indonesia the time he was arrested, he was freed after just a few days. But, he was then exiled from the country under the status of “persona non grata” meaning the he wouldn’t be permitted to visit Indonesia. Leonard Retel Helmrich traveled to Kansas City, Missouri to collaborate alongside the Institute of Art in developing the fundamentals for Single Shot Cinema. In 1997, his brother was able to persuade that the Indonesian government to modify its “persona non grata” status and Leonard Retel Helmrich was allowed to return to complete his work. Unfortunately, a large portion of the materials were destroyed or rendered unusable. Helmrich decided to alter his method of operation. A lot of journalists were covering the downfall of Suharto and Retel Helmrich wanted to concentrate on the micro- aspects that accompanied the change by following an Indonesian family living in an slum in Jakarta. The changes in the realm of religion, politics and islamization, poverty globalization, social inequality, corruption, criminality, etc. have affected each Indonesian throughout his day-to-day life. This is why he came up with the idea of filming a trilogy about the struggle to survive of a family during the darkest days of Indonesia. In 2001, he completed Eye of the Day (Stand van de Zon) and in 2004 he released Shape of the Moon (Stand van de Maan) that became a global commercial success.

Leonard Retel Helmrich has served as a juror for a variety of film festivals, including those that took place in Shanghai, Warsaw, Seoul, Sibiu (Romania) and Amsterdam. He has also had significant exhibitions of the work held at Visions du Reel in Nyon, Switzerland, Rencontres Internationales du Documentaire in Montreal and at ASTRA in Sibiu, Romania. He has also given lectures and screened his films in various educational institutions, including those at the Flaherty Seminar program at the Flaherty Seminar Program in New York and at Harvard University where the award was an Fellowship with The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies. Leonard is the director and cameraman who directs his own films and is most well-known for his philosophy and the approach that he refers to as ‘Single Shot Cinema’. It includes long shots with an unidirectional, hand-held camera which is closer to his subject. In his films, it’s the frame and motion of the camera that evokes and evokes the viewers’ emotions. He has led various seminars about Single Shot Cinema techniques for film festivals, broadcasters and independent filmmakers. He has also taught film schools and universities across Europe, Asia, North America, Australia and in Africa. While he was on his Harvard fellowship in editing, he completed his most recent documentary Position Among the Stars, the third installment of his trilogy about contemporary Indonesia. He is currently working on a book on “Single Shot Cinema”.

“His camera glides through spaces in a way that just seems impossible… Sometimes you stop looking at the movie and look at the shot. But I think it’s delightful.” Robb Moss, film lecturer at Harvard.

Helmrich is famous for perfecting the ‘Single Shot Cinema’ filming method and his related technical camera innovations. “…you can move inside an event and go with your camera to the right spot, at the right moment,… That’s what the whole single-shot cinema is about: trying to think of the world as a kind of clockwork, a machinery, with everything interrelated. The bigger and smaller things are just as important. In a clockworks you can’t pull out a little gear because the whole thing jams. The solution is to become one of the clockworks.”, Leonard Retel Helmrich.

Following Indonesian independence, the Helmrich family returned to the Netherlands in their time in the Indo diaspora. The father of the family, Jean Retel Helmrich, was born to a affluent totok family from Semarang, Dutch East Indies and fought against Japanese invading forces throughout World War II and was imprisoned as a POW for three years. Following the war, he got married to with a Javanese woman. “It was forbidden,” Mr. Helmrich’s sister and producer, Hetty Naaijkens-Retel Helmrich, explained. “They needed approval from Queen Elizabeth II, the Indonesian government as well as the Dutch government as well as The Muslim Church, as well as also the Catholic Church. This is Romeo and Juliet.” When he was a kid the filmmaker “had many issues due to dyslexia,” she told. “The teachers were always complaining that he was living in his own world, but already when he was a little boy he made very good drawings.” The family’s faith in him grew to funding “Eye of the Day” as well as involving him in other ways. Ms. Naaijkens-Retel Helmrich’s production firm, Scarabee, produces Mr. Helmrich’s films. Her Son, Jasper Naaijkens, is the editor of his unclethis isn’t an difficult task, given the fact that the quality of work that Mr. Helmrich can come up with hours-long scenes.

Leonard Retel Helmrich Net Worth

Leonard Retel Helmrich is one of the richest Film Director from Netherlands. According to our analysis, Wikipedia, Forbes & Business Insider, Leonard Retel Helmrich 's net worth $5 Million. (Last Update: December 11, 2023)

“In “Shape of the Moon” (2004) a barefoot man crosses a railroad trestle a thousand feet above an Indonesian valley, stepping briskly along a beam barely wider than his feet. We see him from behind. We see him from above. Most alarming, we see him from the side, by means of a camera that seems mounted in midair. It’s breathtaking, what the subject is doing. But a man with a camera is doing it too.” John Anderson, The New York Times.

Since then, Retel Helmrich’s films have been screened and received acclaim at international film festivals and have won important awards for both his documentary and drama work. The awards he has won include the debut World Cinema Jury Prize Documentary at Sundance 2005, as well as the highly coveted Joris Ivens Prize in IDFA Amsterdam 2004 for his Indonesian feature documentary Shape of the Moon (Stand van de Maan). In 2010, he received again the Grand VPRO/IDFA Award for feature documentaries to Position Among the Stars (Stand van de Sterren) along with an IDFA Award for the best Dutch documentary. This marked the first occasion in IDFA tradition that a filmmaker had won this award twice time. In January of 2011, he won another time at Sundance where he won the World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Prize for the position in the Stars.

Leonard Retel Helmrich is a Dutch cinematographer and film director. He was born the 16th of August 1959 in Tilburg, Netherlands and has lived in Amsterdam since 1982. He received highest honours for international documentaries at the Sundance Festival and was the first two-time International Documentary winner at the International Documentary Filmfestival Amsterdam (IDFA). In June 5, 2018 he was rewarded by the Dutch King Willem- Alexander with the title Knight in the Order of the Dutch Lion, a very high distinction.

Height, Weight & Body Measurements

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Who is Leonard Retel Helmrich Dating?

According to our records, Leonard Retel Helmrich is possibily single & has not been previously engaged. As of December 1, 2023, Leonard Retel Helmrich’s is not dating anyone.

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Facts & Trivia

Leonard Ranked on the list of most popular Film Director. Also ranked in the elit list of famous people born in Netherlands. Leonard Retel Helmrich celebrates birthday on August 16 of every year.