Richard Lehun

Biography

Richard Lehun studied under Jürgen Habermas at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University Frankfurt am Main on a DAAD Scholarship and completed his Magister Artium on non-conceptual truth claims in T.W. Adorno's Negative Dialectics and Aesthetic Theory. At this time he served as an intern to the commissioning editors of the acclaimed German Television broadcast, ZDF Das Kleine Fernsehspiel. During his studies in Frankfurt he was admitted to the Deutsche Film- und Fernsehakademie (dffb) for studies in film and television directing. His self-financed graduating film entitled Fetisch was awarded the German National Film Prize (Bundesfilmpreis 2002). Fetisch was highlighted by the German Export Union and was shown at over 30 international film festivals worldwide. At the completion of his film studies, Richard Lehun was admitted to the European Audio-Visual Entrepreneurs program (EAVE), the European Union's extensive training program for film and television producers focusing on international co-production. At this time Richard Lehun was also admitted to the international roster of the Directors Guild of Canada (DGC) and is also currently a member of the Deutsche Filmakademie.

After completing his Magister Artium, Richard Lehun pursued graduate studies in Canada, first completing a B.C.L. / LL.B. and then moving on directly to the D.C.L. program at McGill University. Richard Lehun's legal focus is fiduciary law and intellectual property, and he gathered practical legal experience while having worked with Léger Robic Richard, Montréal's respected practitioners in the field. While completing his legal studies he also performed community legal service on the part of Project Genesis. Project Genesis is a grassroots community organization in Côte-des-Neiges, a culturally diverse Montréal neighbourhood where more than 40 percent of households live below the poverty line.

Since completing his law degree Richard Lehun has directed two films. “One Last Dance”, shot in Montréal with an all star cast including Dorothée Berryman, Caroline Dhavernas, Danny Gilmore, and Anthony Lemke, was released in the spring of 2009. "One Last Dance" was funded by the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec (CALQ) and the Société de développement des entreprises culturelles du Québec (SODEC) as well as the National Film Board (NFB). “8.5 mm”, shot in Berlin at the since infamous Bar 25, is a continuation of the formalistic aesthetic contained in “Fetisch”. “8.5 mm” was edited and produced by the alternative Brooklyn film director Mark Mitchell. The past years have also seen cooperations with Deutsche Grammophon on visual essays of the artists, Lang Lang, Mischa Maisky, Vadim Repin, Measha Brueggergosman, Alice Sara Ott.

Richard Lehun worked closely with Prof. Richard Janda, and their "Sustainable Development as an Emancipatory Truth Claim", questioned both the focus and pedagogical model of conventional legal education. The course was also co-taught at the Law Faculty of the Freie Universität, Berlin in 2008. The approach of the course has been based on the work of Prof. Roderick Macdonald (former F.R. Scott Professor of Constitutional and Public Law) also of McGill University.

Richard Lehun's current research is focused on the concept of the fiduciary as applied to social transformation. In 2010, Richard Lehun was a Visiting Researcher at Harvard Law School under Duncan Kennedy. In November 2012, he received a six-month scholarship from the DAAD for studies on the political implications of his theory of emancipatory justice at the Westfaelische Wilhelms-Universitaet Muenster under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Bernd Holznagel. In 2014, Richard Lehun acted as Junior Faculty for the Institute for Global Law and Policy (IGLP) at Harvard Law School, and a regular guest lecturer at O. P. Jindal Global University in New Delhi. He is a regular guest lecturer at Sotheby's Institute of Art and Christie's Education on the topic of fiduciary obligations in the fine art context. Richard Lehun is also a founding member of the New York Stropheus legal and business collective for the arts, responsible for gallery, museum, and auction house ethics and fiduciary duties, and a member of the Art Law Committee of New York City Bar Association.