Biography

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 (2010), follow to perhaps the most famous Cuban film of all times: Memories of Underdevelopment (1968) both based on novels by Cuban author Edmundo Desnoes.
- IMDb mini biography by: Suzana Dejkanovic