Peter Schnitzler has had a long history in the visual arts. As a painter, he has had exhibitions in Los Angeles, Munich and Salt Spring Island, British Columbia and his works are included in private collections both in Europe and America. Born in Vienna, Austria, raised in the United States, Schnitzler was trained as a documentary filmmaker at UCLA and in the early 1960s worked as a director-writer of documentary and industrial-educational films with Centron Corporation in Lawrence, Kansas. (He played a bit role as a zombie in Centron co-worker Herk Harvey's influential feature film, Carnival of Souls (1962), shot in Lawrence). Schnitzler eventually returned to California and since then has produced, written and directed over 100 films on the arts, sciences and social and environmental issues. Many of his films have received awards and festival recognition. He presently divides his time between Topanga, California and Salt Spring Island, Canada. He is married to art historian Alexa Sekyra, has three children and three grandchildren and is the grandson of Austrian writer Arthur Schnitzler.