Biography

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Rick Minnich
Berlin, Germany
filmmaker
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Supplementary Information
Title/Occupation:  Director  Writer 
Gender: Male
Race: Caucasian/White
Citizenship: USA
Languages Spoken: English, German

Brief Message to Members: 

I'm an American independent filmmaker based in Berlin, Germany since 1990. I specialize in writing and directing feature documentaries. My films include FORGETTING DAD, HOMEMADE HILLBILLY JAM, HEAVEN ON EARTH, GOOD GUYS & BAD GUYS.

Biography: 

Born in Pomona, California in 1968, Rick Minnich grew up in Kansas, Arizona, and California. Following completion of his undergraduate studies in English literature at Columbia University in 1990, he worked as a camera assistant for Latvian Television in Riga, at which time he travelled extensively throughout Eastern and Central Europe, finally landing in Berlin, where he worked as a kitchen helper in a Greek restaurant and as an English teacher and translator. In 1991, he began studying film at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), but returned to Berlin one year later as a graduate fellow of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) at the Hochschule für Film & Fernsehen “Konrad Wolf” in Potdsam-Babelsberg, where he completed his studies in directing in 2001.
He has written and directed several narrative shorts, as well as three long documentaries. His graduation film HEAVEN ON EARTH (about the Bible Belt showtown Branson, Missouri) won the Babelsberg Media Prize for the best graduation film (documentary) in Germany in 2001, as well as the Hans W. Geissendoerfer Young Talent Award (a prominent award for young filmmakers in Germany), the FIPA d’Or (first prize) at the FIPA television festival in Biarritz, France in 2002, and a number of smaller prizes in the US and Europe. It was also nominated for the IDA/David L. Wolper Student Documentary Achievement Award.
Minnich’s debut film HOMEMADE HILLBILLY JAM (2005) had its world premiere at the prestigious HotDocs Film Festival in Toronto, Canada in April 2005, and was the opening night film of the 2005 Hot Springs Documenary Festival in Arkansas as well as the closing night film of the True/False Film Festival in Columbia, Missouri. In the spring of 2006 it toured the UK as part of the “Sheffield International Documentary Festival on Tour" program sponsored by the British Film Institute. It played at festivals and in theaters throughout the US, where First Run Features released it on DVD in 2008.
Minnich’s latest film FORGETTING DAD, his second collaboration with co-writer and editor Matt Sweetwood, produced in association with German television ZDF and Hoferichter & Jacobs GmbH, won the Special Jury Award at its world premiere in the Joris Ivens Competition at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) in November 2008, and has won four more prizes since then, including the Grand Jury Prize at GZDOC in Guangzhou, China – the largest documentary film festival in Asia. W-Film is releasing it theatrically throughout Germany beginning June 3, 2010.
Rick Minnich’s films have screened at festivals in eighteen countries on six continents, and have been broadcast on public television stations in Germany (ARTE, WDR, RBB), Switzerland (DSR, TSR), The Netherlands (IKON), Ireland, Austria (ORF), France, Russia (REN-TV), Denmark (Dansk TV), Finland (YLE), Belgium, Canada, and via Pay TV (Planet) throughout Europe and Africa.
Rick Minnich lives in Berlin with his wife Susanne and their five children.