Otto Heller


Otto Heller, B.S.C. was a Czech cinematographer long resident in the United Kingdom. He worked on more than 250 films, including Richard III, The Ladykillers or Peeping Tom.

Life

Otto Heller was born in a Jewish family in Prague on 8 March 1896. As a teenager, he became a projectionist in the Lucerna cinema. During the World War I, he worked in a film laboratory in Vienna. After the war, he started to work as a documentary cameraman at Pragafilm. During the 1920s, he was the most requested cinematographer in Czechoslovakia. Together with Karel Lamač, Anny Ondra and Václav Wasserman, he made many movies both for domestic and international audience. He often worked with Svatopluk Innemann, Martin Frič and Jan S. Kolár. Because of the rise of Nazism, he left Czechoslovakia in 1938 with Lamač. He became a British citizen in 1945. Heller continued to live and make movies in UK until his death.
He died in London on 19 February 1970.

Selected filmography