Eve Heller, born in 1961 in

Amherst Amherst may refer to: People * Amherst (surname), including a list of people with the name * Earl Amherst of Arracan in the East Indies, a title in the British Peerage; formerly ''Baron Amherst'' * Baron Amherst of Hackney of the City of London, ...

, is an American filmmaker based in

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

, Austria. Her work has been shown at the New York Film Festival, the

Whitney Museum of American Art The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is an art museum in the Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875–1942), ...

, the Pacific Film Archives, the

International Film Festival Rotterdam The International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) is an annual film festival held at the end of January in various locations in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Since its foundation in 1972, it has maintained a focus on independent and experimental fi ...

, the

Louvre The Louvre ( ), or the Louvre Museum ( ), is the world's most-visited museum, and an historic landmark in Paris, France. It is the home of some of the best-known works of art, including the ''Mona Lisa'' and the ''Venus de Milo''. A central l ...

and the

Austrian Film Museum The Austrian Film Museum (German: Österreichisches Filmmuseum) is a film archive and museum located in Vienna, Austria. It was founded by Peter Konlechner and Peter Kubelka in 1964 as a non-profit organization. History In February 1964, indepe ...

. Her German mother and Austrian father had to emigrate from Austria to the United States in 1938 because of the Nazis. Heller grew up bilingual. She attended the University at Buffalo's Department of Media Studies and studied filmmaking at Bard College. Her teachers there included Peggy Ahwesh,

Abigail Child Abigail Child is a filmmaker, poet, and writer who has been active in experimental writing and media since the 1970s. She has completed more than thirty film and video works and installations, and six books. Child's early film work addressed the in ...

, Peter Hutton,

Paul Sharits Paul Jeffrey Sharits (February 7, 1943, Denver, Colorado—July 8, 1993, Buffalo, New York) was a visual artist, best known for his work in experimental, or avant-garde filmmaking, particularly what became known as the structural film movement, ...

and

Tony Conrad Anthony Schmalz Conrad (March 7, 1940 – April 9, 2016) was an American video artist, experimental filmmaker, musician, composer, sound artist, teacher, and writer. Active in a variety of media since the early 1960s, he was a pioneer of both d ...

. She also studied

German literature German literature () comprises those literature, literary texts written in the German language. This includes literature written in Germany, Austria, the German parts of Switzerland and Belgium, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, South Tyrol in Italy a ...

and Interdisciplinary Studies. At the age of 17, studying in Buffalo, she started filmmaking. Heller claims that the lively avantgarde scene there concerning all kinds of disciplines had a great influence on her work. Heller works with

16mm film 16 mm film is a historically popular and economical gauge of film. 16 mm refers to the width of the film (about inch); other common film gauges include 8 and 35 mm. It is generally used for non-theatrical (e.g., industrial, educ ...

, sometimes hand-processed. She uses an JK

optical printer An optical printer is a device consisting of one or more film projectors mechanically linked to a movie camera. It allows filmmakers to re-photograph one or more strips of film. The optical printer is used for making special effects for motion ...

to work on found footage frame by frame, enlarging image details and dissecting and composing the material in

cut-up technique The cut-up technique (or ''découpé'' in French) is an aleatory literary technique in which a written text is cut up and rearranged to create a new text. The concept can be traced to the Dadaists of the 1920s, but it was developed and popularized ...

reminiscent of William S. Burroughs. Through the editing of slowed-down and layered images she brings her source material into a new context and creates a dreamlike atmosphere. By doing so she also makes the materiality of the medium she works with palpable. Besides filmmaking Heller teaches on analog filmmaking and works as a translator, specializing in texts about cinema. Her partner is the Austrian filmmaker

Peter Tscherkassky Peter Tscherkassky (born October 3, 1958) is an Austrian avant-garde filmmaker who works primarily with found footage. All of his work is done with film and heavily edited in the darkroom, rather than relying on recent advances in digital film. ...

. They worked together on the book "Film Unframed: A History of Austrian Avant-Garde Cinema" which describes the historical and aesthetic evolution of Austrian

avant-garde film Experimental film or avant-garde cinema is a mode of filmmaking that rigorously re-evaluates cinematic conventions and explores non-narrative forms or alternatives to traditional narratives or methods of working. Many experimental films, parti ...

Filmography

* ''Astor Place'' (10 min, 1997) * ''Behind This Soft Eclipse'' (10 min, 2004) * ''Creme 21'' (10 min, 2013) * ''Her Glacial Speed'' (10 min, 2001) * ''Juice'' (4 min, 1982–2010) * ''Last Lost'' (14 min, 1996) * ''One'' (2 min, 1978–2010) * ''Ruby Skin'' (4 min 30 sec, 2005) * ''Self-Examination Remote Control'' (5 min, 1981–2010)

References

Living people American film producers American expatriates in Austria Film people from Vienna 1961 births {{US-film-producer-stub