Trial by fire: a journey with Richard Leiterman - cinematographer

TAKE ONE, May, 2002 by Richard Leiterman

Richard Leiterman rescheduled our interview. He had to attend the funeral of a dear friend and colleague, the veteran Toronto producer and editor, Don Haig, who passed away in March. This made for an interesting parallel. Both men have made an indelible impression on the Canadian film scene through their excellent craft and risk--taking natures, but not as directors. In an international film culture dominated by the idea and word auteur, many forget that filmmaking is primarily a collaborative art. Even the filmmakers who work with the smallest of crews, like the American Frederick Wiseman, who functions as his own soundperson, has to depend upon the skills and artistry of others, as Wiseman did with Richard Leiterman, on his seminal, uncompromising documentary High School (1969).

In a 35--year career, Leiterman, who was born in 1935 in the small town of South Porcupine in northern Ontario, has collaborated with some of Canada's best filmmakers, including Allan King, Don Shebib, Donald Brittain, Gilles Carle and Claude Jutra. His filmography boasts some of this country's most respected documentaries and narrative features such as Shebib's Goin' down the Road (1970) and Between Friends (1973), William Fruet's Wedding in White (1972), Joyce Wieland's The Far Shore (1976), Carle's Maria Chapdelaine (1983), Sandy Wilson's My American Cousin (1985), as well as King's A Married Couple (1969), Who Has Seen the Wind (1977) and Silence of the North (1981). Aside from his work with notable Canadian directors, Leiterman has also worked with and/or observed some very extraordinary Americans, such as Malcolm X in One More River (1963), Margaret Mead in Margaret Mead's New Guinea Journal (1968) and Norman Mailer in Will the Real Norman Mailer Please Stand Up? (1968). Leiterman has also received nume rous awards, including two Canadian Society of Cinematographers awards, two Genies (for The Far Shore and Silence of the North), three Emmy nominations, and a Yorkton Golden Sheaf Award. Most recently he was the recipient of the Canadian Society of Cinematographers' Kodak New Century Award for his outstanding contribution to the art of cinematography.

Now Leiterman has taken a mentorship role at Sheridan College, in Oakville, Ontario, in the Media Arts Program and the Sheridan Centre for Animation and Emerging Technologies, imparting his knowledge onto future filmmakers and technicians. The venture into teaching does not mean Leiterman is retiring from filmmaking. This summer he plans to shoot an independent feature. He is also in the process of developing a feature narrative he hopes to direct. Despite all the ups and downs of the Canadian film and television industry Leitenman has witnessed and experienced first--hand, he still wants to take the risk and make independent films. While talking with Leiterman about his work and travels, the themes of risk--taking kept resurfacing, as did the themes of collaboration and mentorship; themes that have navigated Leiterman and his lens across Canada and the world in the making of documentaries, feature narratives and television dramas.

Leitenman had originally been attracted to the idea of being a cameraman because it provided him the opportunity to do what he really loves to do, travel. Travelling throughout Europe during the 1960s, he knew he was getting a first--rate education. By exploring different cultures, as well as meeting new individuals and learning about their communities, Leitenman's eyes opened up to new ways of thinking and living. He began his professional career as a CBC news cameraman, but it was the opportunity to work with his older brother, Douglas, who was a producer on the groundbreaking CBC news magazine program This Hour Has Seven Days, that ushered Leiterman into the realm of filmmaking.

Douglas produced Beryl Fox's award-winning and powerful One More River for CBC's Intertel series, which was a report on the mood of the deep South nine years after the Supreme Court-ordered integration, as well as Fox's Summer in Mississippi (1965), made for This Hour. Both films were awakenings for Richard, professionally and politically. As he had hoped, his Bell and Howell camera did take him to exotic and unusual places, but it would also accompany him into worlds he could never have imagined to be real. The camera became more than a machine to record images of reality, it acted as Leiterman's own personal window onto the world, the good and the bad.

"I had never been to the southern United States. I was completely naive and One More River was the first feature documentary I had shot. I experienced things that really started my mind thinking about the ills of the world, and perhaps why documentaries are so important to be made, and why they became a big part of my life." On One More River, Leiterman learned that capturing relevant and significant footage would mean he would have to take some risks, even if those risks were at times political and ethical ones. Early on Leiterman felt uneasy about his role as a cameraperson filming vulnerable people in very tumultuous situations, undecided over whether he was exploring or exploiting. "I had an awful time, particularly at the funeral. Was it exploitation by going in and watching tears roll down their faces? Or was this what we had to show? I still have this twinge, shivers in my back. I still see those faces. And even in doing One More River, going into a small black community as a white person, I felt I was intruding on something that was so sacred to them, on something that was at least their own."