Biography
Willy Zielke, also known as Wilhelm Otto Zielke and Viktor Valet, was a German photographer, director and cinematographer. Born on 18 September 1902 in Łódź, Poland, he trained at the Bavarian State School of Photography in Munich from 1923, later teaching there until 1936. He participated in the 1929 Film und Foto exhibition in Stuttgart with his still-life photography.
From 1931 he worked in film as writer, director and cinematographer on short documentaries, including Arbeitslos. Ein Schicksal von Millionen (1933). He directed and photographed the avant-garde industrial film Das Stahltier (1935). Zielke contributed cinematography to Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will (1935) and created the prologue for her Olympia films (1938), on which he was also an uncredited cinematographer. Later credits include direction and cinematography on several 1950s shorts; he shared the Deutscher Filmpreis for cinematography on Schöpfung ohne Ende (1956). He died on 16 June 1989 in Bad Pyrmont, Germany.
