Leonard Retel Helmrich (16 August 1959 – 15 July 2023) was a Dutch cinematographer and film director. Born in Tilburg, he 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). On June 5, 2018 he was rewarded by the Dutch King Willem-Alexander with the title Knight in the Order of the Netherlands Lion.
Helmrich was known for his work with the 'Single Shot Cinema' filming method.
Biography
After Indonesian independence the Helmrich family repatriated to the Netherlands during the Indo diaspora. His father, Jean Retel Helmrich, was born to a wealthy totok family in Semarang, Dutch East Indies, fought against the Japanese invaders during World War II and was interred as a POW for three years. After the war, he married a Javanese woman. "It was forbidden," Mr. Helmrich's sister and producer, Hetty Naaijkens-Retel Helmrich, explained. "They had to get permission from the Queen, from the Indonesian government, the Dutch government, the Muslim church, and the Catholic Church. It was Romeo and Juliet." Growing up, the filmmaker "had a lot of problems because of his dyslexia," she said. "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 belief in him extended to financing "Eye of the Day" and getting involved in other ways.
Leonard Retel Helmrich graduated from the Dutch Film and Television Academy in 1986 and in 1990 he made his first feature film, The Phoenix Mystery. His first documentary, Moving Objects (1991) was awarded the Special Jury Price for the Best Artist-Profile at the International Golden Gate Film Festival of San Francisco. Retel Helmrich developed his own cinematic style based on a principle which he has developed and calls "Single Shot Cinema". After finishing the film Moving Objects, he decided to travel to Indonesia where his parents were born, with the idea to show people around the world what was happening in this beautiful and very complicated country. He discovered that the authority of President Suharto was declining. In 1995 he made a film about Suharto and his wife in their Jakartan palace. He then went to Solo in central Java to film a demonstration against the Suharto regime. During his activities he was arrested by the police and accused of being a Western spy. With the help of the Dutch Embassy and his brother Anton, who happened to be in Indonesia, he was released after a few days. However, he was expelled from the country with the status "persona non grata" meaning he would no longer be allowed to visit Indonesia. Leonard Retel Helmrich traveled to Kansas City, Missouri to work with the Institute of Art in developing the principles of Single Shot Cinema. In 1997 his brother succeeded to convince the Indonesian government to change his "persona non grata" status and Leonard Retel Helmrich was allowed to return to finish his work. Unfortunately a lot of material had been destroyed or was unusable. He decided to change his strategy. Many journalists were reporting the fall of Suharto and Retel Helmrich wanted to focus on the micro-aspects of the changes by following an Indonesian family in one of Jakarta's slums. All the changes in politics, religion, islamization, poverty, social injustice, globalization, criminality, corruption, etc. affected every Indonesian in his daily life. Thus he came up with the idea to film a triptych about the struggle for survival of a family in those trying days in Indonesia. In 2001 he finished Eye of the Day (Stand van de Zon) and in 2004 he made Shape of the Moon (Stand van de Maan) which became a worldwide success.
After then Retel Helmrich's films screened and won acclaim at film festivals worldwide, garnering major awards for both his drama and documentary work. His awards included the inaugural World Cinema Jury Prize Documentary at Sundance 2005 and the prestigious Joris Ivens Award at IDFA Amsterdam 2004 for his Indonesian feature documentary Shape of the Moon (Stand van de Maan). In 2010 he won for the second time the Grand VPRO/IDFA Award for feature documentary for Position Among the Stars (Stand van de Sterren) together with the IDFA Award for the best Dutch documentary. It was the first time in the IDFA history that a director won this award for the second time. In January 2011 he won again at Sundance where he received the World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Prize for Position among the Stars.