David W. Leitner
- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
- Producer
David Leitner is a producer, cinematographer, and DP on television,
feature-length documentaries and feature films. A former I.A.T.S.E. 644
Director of Photography, Leitner has photographed for documentary
directors Fred Wiseman, Allan Miller, Alan Berliner, Joe Berlinger,
DeWitt Sage, Oren Rudavsky, Doug Block, Judith Helfand, and the team of
Louis Alvarez/Andrew Kolker/Paul Stekler. He has key credits in over
forty feature-length documentaries filmed in the UK, South & Central
America, East & West Europe and former Soviet Union, including as
director/producer/DP, Vienna Is Different (1989 Berlin Film Festival,
1990 Sundance competition, 1990 San Francisco Film Festival, Special
Jury Award). As Co-Producer, his 1990 Oscar-nominated For All Mankind,
also won the 1989 Sundance Jury & Audience Awards, Best Documentary. As
Associate Producer, his The Gate Of Heavenly Peace was shown at the
1995 New York Film Festival, 1996 Berlin Film Festival. He was
nominated for a 1999 Emmy for cinematography for Marion Cajori's
Portrait-In-Progress: Chuck Close. Other cinematography credits include
PBS/Frontline's Schizophrenia: Broken Mind (four national broadcasts,
1990), Alan Berliner's Nobody's Business (1996 New York Film Festival,
1997 Berlin Film Festival), and Christian Baudissin's Die Slocum
Brennt! (1999 German broadcast). Dramatic features include Gabriela
Rangel's Corazones Negros (Venezuela, 1994) and Diane Orr's hybrid
documentary/drama, Lost Forever With Everett Ruess (2000), which he
also produced and Trembling before G-d (2001). As Director of New
Technology at Du Art Film Laboratory in the 1980s, he produced
innovations in 16-to-35mm blow-ups, film camera lens testing, film
timecode, and film-to-tape transfers. He is the author of over 100
articles on film history, theory, and technology in Filmmaker,
Millimeter, The Independent (created "In Focus" column, 1981-88),
International Documentary, In Motion, Variety's On Production, Digital
Magic, RES, and the SMPTE Journal; he also wrote Eastman Kodak's
booklet, Creating Better Video with 16mm Film [1992] Most recently
Leitner directed his first dramatic feature, My Sister's Wedding
(2001), a romantic comedy filmed in high definition digital video for
transfer to 35mm. As a producer he has to his credit: The Technical
Writer (2003) and Swimmers (2005) and most recently Memories of
Overdevelopment (2005), follow to perhaps the most famous Cuban film of
all times: Memories of Underdevelopment (1968) both based on novels by
Cuban author Edmundo Desnoes.