"The singlemost mind-blowing filmmaking technique the cinetrix has ever seen occurs in the films of Leonard Retel Helmrich, who was at the Flaherty Seminar this week." —cinetrix, daily.greencine.com, June 24, 2007
Cornell Cinema welcomes Dutch/Indonesian filmmaker Leonard Retel Helmrich for a special two-day engagement on April 17 & 18, when his three most recent documentaries—shot before, during and after Suharto stepped down as president in Indonesia—will be shown.
Helmrich worked as a drama director and cameraman in the Netherlands before going to Indonesia to make a series of documentaries that have won awards worldwide. He developed a theoretical perspective for his work as well as a practical technique for an approach that he calls 'single shot cinema', involving long takes with a constantly moving camera. He has also designed a special camera mount that allows extraordinary stability and maneuverability in shooting called "Steadywings". Having spent years designing this technique he now also runs workshops for broadcasters and with filmmakers to share his skills, most recently in Amsterdam, Belgium, South Africa, Germany, Indonesia and Sydney, Australia.
While filming a demonstration in 1995, Helmrich was arrested and jailed as a suspected spy, then declared persona non grata. He was not able to return to Indonesia until 1997. That same year he began following the Sjamsuddin family with his camera. This footage became The Eye of the Day (2001), the film that put Helmrich on the global filmmaking map. The vivid follow-up to The Eye of the Day, The Shape Of The Moon, won Best Documentary in the World Docs Competition at Sundance in 2005 as well as at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) in 2004 where he won the prestigious Joris Ivens Award. His most recent film, Promised Paradise (2006), was banned in Indonesia. It follows the quest of an Indonesian puppeteer to meet three men convicted of the 2002 nightclub bombings in Bali. All three of these films will be screened at Cornell Cinema with Leonard in attendance.
Leonard’s visit is made possible with the support of the Central New York Programmers’ Group, which is administered through Cornell Cinema and funded by the New York State Council on the Arts. His visit is additionally cosponsored with the Southeast Asia Program, the Indonesian Students Association and The Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media.