Leonard Retel Helmrich

Who is Leonard Retel Helmrich?

Leonard Retel Helmrich is a Dutch cinematographer and film director of Indo descent. He was born the 16th of August 1959 in Tilburg, Netherlands and has lived in Amsterdam since 1982. Received highest honours for international documentaries at the Sundance Festival and was the first two-time International Documentary winner at the Amsterdam Film Festival.

Helmrich is famous for perfecting the 'Single Camera Shot' filming style 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.