Biography

Peter Zeitlinger is an accomplished film maker whose career encompasses cinematography, directing, writing and editing.  He first worked as Director of Photography on Werner Herzog’s documentary, Death For Five Voices in 1995, beginning a collaboration which has lasted right up to now with Bad Lieutenant.

Soon after the Soviet occupation of Prague in the summer of 1968, Zeitlinger’s family moved to neighboring Austria to live.  Not yet ten years old, he had to adopt a new mother tongue. Being forced to express himself in a new way, he started painting and sketching.  At thirteen, Zeitlinger discovered the possibility of making moving images. A friend's father, a doctor, had an 8mm camera which he kept in his office. As teenagers, the two boys secretly watched the doctor at work, and discovered the camera. From that time, the boy would sneak into the office at night and use the camera to work on his own animated films, sneaking out at the crack of dawn. One night he was caught, but to his amazement the wealthy doctor was so deeply moved by the animated films that he gave his camera to the "poor refugees' child". Now Zeitlinger could film in the outside world during the hours of daylight.  One of his first films, We Walked, won a Youth Film Festival prize and along with it a camera with zoom and audio recording features. That was when filming really lifted off for him.  By the time he was accepted by the Film Academy he had produced 70 short or animated films. His first animated film, Der Geburtstag (The Birthday) was his ticket to University.

During his University years he wrote a number of scripts, one of which, co-written with Erhard Riedlsperger was Tunnelkind (Tunnel Child). The film is set at the Czech-Austrian border where the Iron Curtain was erected during the late ‘60s. Borders and marginalization are recurring topics in Zeitlinger’s work. Although many films he produced during his university years were prizes, due to Austria’s bureaucratic academic structure, it first seemed impossible for a young graduate from university to work as Director of Photography. Normally, years of work as an assistant were to be expected.   Finally, he got to photograph the film which was invited to the International Berlin Film Festival. The film tells the story of a little girl who manages to convince the chief builder at the construction site to build the electric fence above a secret tunnel, leaving an escape  into freedom. During the production of Tunnelkind the Iron Curtain was abolished. Reality seemed to catch up with fiction. The Berlin Film Festival was also dominated by the liberalization of the communist countries, and the film was applauded as dealing marvelously with current affairs.

After Werner Herzog watched Zeitlinger's outstanding hand-held camera work in Ulrich Seidl’s Prepared for Losses, Herzog hired him for a documentary, Death for Five Voices which won the Prix d’Italia. Zeitlinger has been Herzog’s favorite DP ever since.

In 2005 he worked on Grizzly Man, where Herzog did a remarkable job putting together Timothy Treadwell’s extraordinary story, bringing to life a man who claimed to be a ‘Peaceful Warrior’, protecting the grizzly bears in a remote region of Alaska.

They went on to work together on MGM’s Rescue Dawn starring Christian Bale and Steve Zahn. Written and directed by Herzog, it was based on his acclaimed 1997 documentary, Little Dieter Needs to Fly.  Zeitlinger’s meticulous attention to detail and unique visual style added immeasurably to the quality of the film.  

The director-photographer team was selected for the US-Antarctic Program by the US National Science Foundation resulting in the 2007 film, Encounters at the End of the World,KONTAKT ZU WERNER HERZOG a beautiful look at a beautiful continent.  The film perfectly balances both gorgeous footage of the continent’s wildlife and scenery as well as fascinating interviews and anecdotes of the many researchers and workers at the McMurdo research station.