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“Forgetting Dad” is a feature documentary (84 min.) written, directed and edited by German-based US filmmakers Rick Minnich and Matt Sweetwood. It tells the bizarre story of Rick’s father’s sudden and incomprehensible amnesia, which began one week after a seemingly harmless car accident in 1990. After the onset of his amnesia, Rick’s father re-christened himself “New Richard” and began a completely new life, leaving his family feeling abandoned and baffled at where “Old Richard” went.

“Forgetting Dad” is a documentary detective story which takes viewers on an emotional roller coaster ride to the various family members and to one of Richard’s former colleagues in search of answers to why Richard’s memory has never returned. Along the way, Rick uncovers startling facts which shed new light on his father’s amnesia. Is everything really as Richard has led everyone to believe, or is there more to his memory loss than meets the eye?

“Forgetting Dad” 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 gone on to win numerous other prizes including the audience award at the 1st International Health Film Festival in Kos (Greece), an honorable mention at Achtung Berlin – New Berlin Film Award, and the William Dieterle Film Prize (Special Prize) in Germany. The film is a co-production of German television ZDF and the German production company Hoferichter & Jacobs GmbH in association with rickfilms. World Sales are being handled by Jan Rofekamp at Films Transit, Inc.

Writer/director Rick Minnich will be in the US Nov. 12-22 for a mini-tour with “Forgetting Dad.” The film will screen twice at the Denver Film Festival on Nov. 13-14th, once at the St. Louis International Film Festival Nov. 16th, once at Stephen’s College in Columbia, Missouri the evening of Nov. 17th (Rick will be a visiting artist at Stephen’s Nov. 17-18th), and once at The Moxie in Springfield, MO Sat. Nov. 21st at 4:30 p.m. For details, check the screenings section. Rick will attend all screenings and can be reached on his US mobile at 916-290-2062. Hope to see you, and spread the word!

Belgian public TV station VRT Canvas broadcasted “Forgetting Dad” on Oct. 28th and I’ve been receiving some nice responses from viewers. Feel free to post your comments here on our film blog or become a fan on Facebook.

Thanks,

Rick

Matt and Rick 23.10.2009

Matt and Rick with William Dieterle in between us and Mayor Dr. Eva Lohse to the right

[captionMatt Sweetwood, Mayor Eva Lohse, Rick MinnichMatt and Rick with their certificates and flowersRick and Matt were just in Ludwigshafen am Rhein to receive the William-Dieterle-Filmpreis (special prize) for “Forgetting Dad.” The mayor herself, Dr. Eva Lohse, presented us with the award, which comes with 2500 Euros in prize money. Now how often do you get to rub shoulders with the mayor? What an honor!

The whole ceremony took place at the newly-renovated Pfalzbau, and featured some terrific music by local hero Siggi Schwab and his ensemble.

The Ernst-Bloch-Zentrum and the City of Ludwigshafen present the William-Dieterle Filmpreis every three year in honor of actor/director Wilhelm Dieterle, who changed his name to William when he fled Nazi Germany for Hollywood. This year the main prize (7500 Euros) went to the narrative feature “Der rote Punkt” (The Red Dot) by Munich-based Japanese director Marie Miyayama. It’s hard to compete against our fiction colleagues, so we’re plenty happy to have received the special prize. Special thanks go out to Klaus Kufeld and Herbert Baum from the Ernst-Bloch-Zentrum, to Mayor Dr. Eva Lohse, and to all the nice folks involved in the awards ceremony. And, of course, many thanks to the jury for the recognition!

P.S. You can read Susanne Marshall’s terrific laudatory speech (in German) for both films here.

I didn’t make it to the Spanish premiere at Docúpolis in Barcelona two weeks ago, but I did make it to Ourense for the next Spanish festival. Ourense is nestled in the luscious green hills of Galicia, about 100 km from the Atlantic Ocean, and has a delightful old town along with a really funky new bridge – the Millenium Bridge. My first screening was poorly attended, and I was late to the Q & A because my scrumptious dinner at a nearby restaurant was dragging on and on. I had forgotten to plan extra time for eating in Spain. But the Q & A the next day went well, even if the audience was once again small.

Festival director Enrique Nicanor did an excellent job leading the press conference, and it felt good to sit next to a festival director who was clearly deeply moved by the film, and who was eager to convey his emotions about it to the press people on hand. Enrique says FD has wings that make it fly across borders – that unique universal quality lacking in so many films. He thought it a terrific combination of American independent and European filmmaking. Maybe Matt and I are on to something, even if the film has been doing the least well in our two homelands – the US and Germany – who seem to find the film either too European or too American for their tastes. Still, it’s a wonderful honor to see how strongly FD affects viewers in the rest of the world. The Spaniards, or rather the Galicians (they’re very proud of their own culture and language and subtitled all the films in Galician and not Spanish) are no exception.

Besides seeing some good films such as the peculiar spanish film “La ciudad de los signos” by Samuel Alarcón (an intriguing and enjoyable detective-like homage to Roberto Rossellini), I also got a chance to take in some of Danish producer Lise Lense-Møller’s excellent master class on producing documentaries. She’s been in the business for quite a while, but really shot into the limelight this past year with the incredibly successful doc. “Burma VJ” from Anders Østergaard.

It was fun hanging out with other filmmakers from Canada, the US, France, Spain, Portugal, and Denmark, and dining in high style thanks to the credit cards the festival provided us for a wide range of restaurants. That’s a great idea I hope other festivals will adopt. But the highlight was definitely the party at the Outariz Thermal Baths. After a lovely buffet and drinks, we wandered off into an array of thermal baths of varying temperature, while a band played traditional Galician music to some funky projections on an outdoor movie screen. Heavenly!

The only odd thing about the whole festival was the virtual lack of an audience. I heard of long lines for some films and saw such photos in the newspapers, but all the filmmakers I met complained of having fewer than a dozen viewers at their screenings. Some shows were even cancelled because no one showed up. Hopefully the festival will find a way to better connect with the locals in the coming editions. That would make it into a really delightful regional event.

screen capture from Spiegel Online story from 14 Sept. 2009

screen capture from Spiegel Online story from 14 Sept. 2009

Today the einestages (“One Day”) department of Spiegel Online (the online wing of Der Spiegel – the German equivalent of Time Magazine) published a lengthy article about “Forgetting Dad,” outlining in detail the story of my father’s amnesia. The story is called “Der Mann, der sich vergaß” (“The Man Who Forgot Himself”) and is accompanied by twelve photos with detailed captions. The article is in German, but hopefully it will be translated into English and published in Spiegel International.
This is by far the most widespread press the film has received so far, and I’m ecstatic! Hopefully it will help get the word out about the film, and the issues of brain trauma it raises, and will help us get it shown in even more places.
Many thanks to Solveig Grothe for her loving detail in writing the story and putting together the photos. And thanks to Nils Beier for hooking me up with Solveig and the terrific team of einestages.

Happy days! Last Saturday, “Forgetting Dad” won the 2nd audience award (the unstoppable “The English Surgeon” picked up the first one) at the 1st International Health Film Festival in Kos, Greece. It’s a terrific new festival devoted to films about health-related issues, and takes place on the lovely island of Kos, birthplace of the father of medicine – Hippocrates.

Saw some terrific films, relaxed on the beach with my four-year-old son Elias, met some very likable filmmakers from around the world, and thoroughly enjoyed the Greek way of life.

The fall schedule is filling up with loads of festival dates in Europe and the US. We’re starting off at the 1st International Health Film Festival in Kos, Greece – birthplace of Hippocrates. What better place to host the first ever film festival devoted exclusively to films about health-related issues? I’ll be there all week to present “Forgetting Dad” personally, and to mingle with other filmmakers and interested viewers.

At the Sacramento airport, I was happy to be greeted by a welcoming committee of Lora, her husband Phil, Loretta and Justin. We hadn’t seen one another in two-and-half years. After a tasty dinner of Mexican food, we sat down and watched the movie. Justin’s eyes were glued to the TV, and Loretta struggled to fight back the tears.

Afterwards, we had a long discussion that made me all the more aware of how deeply they’ve all suffered all these years as a result of Dad’s amnesia. Justin is convinced that Dad is fading fast, and that he realizes everyone is catching on to whatever it is that he is hiding. When the scene with my mother came, he couldn’t believe how obvious it all was. Why didn’t we figure it out earlier? This scene also really struck Loretta, who seemed to suddenly wish she had spoken to Mom about it all back then.

More tales of Dad’s funny business with money, of how he apparently was cashing enormous checks for his consulting services before his amnesia began – money that Loretta never saw and found out about only when trying to straighten out the family finances after Dad became incapacitated. She and Lora both think Dad was hiding something on the floppy disks he kept wanting back, but which appear to have vanished into thin air. Another mystery: Why did he insist on having the disks if he could no longer remember how to operate a computer? When I was in his house in Oregon a few years ago, I saw the old computer on his desk, but didn’t snoop around for the floppies. It all reminded me of the secret bank accounts Mom told me Dad had. Are he and Tracy living off her trust fund or off money he stashed away before his amnesia began? The mystery thickens …

For the first time, Justin talked about how he felt during our encounter with Dad in Oregon. He called it a turning point where he felt like he couldn’t attack Dad because he was already a defeated man who had suffered enough. Justin’s emotional torture turned into more of an intellectual curiosity about Dad’s possible motives for wanting to forget. He joined Lora and me in becoming the family detectives.

I was happy and relieved to hear Justin talk about how the film has helped him overcome a lot of the emotional turmoil he has been suffering over the past nineteen years. But the scars of it all keep showing at every turn. He’s clearly not where he wants to be in life, at least not yet, and is still haunted by ghosts of the past.

Justin was so excited by the film that he invited some of his friends over to watch it the next day. He wanted to show them all what’s been torturing him all these years. If catharsis can take on the form of a human face, then it did at that very moment. Justin’s sufferings took on a concrete form – that of the film – which he could share with his friends as though trying to prove that it all really happened.

At some point Justin reminded me of how close I was to cracking up while making the film. I showed him the deleted scene of the two of us in the desert, where he warns me that I’m going to lose it if I keep searching for answers. It was on our way back to California after visiting Dad, and I was really at wit’s end. Throughout the editing process, I had Justin’s words of warning in my ear, but Matt and I simply couldn’t find a way to fit the scene into the film.

Just when I thought Justin might be over the worst, he started to slip again that very same night. Is it the drugs or the mental illness which won’t leave my family alone?

Once again, I left town feeling a bit dazed and confused. Watching the film seemed to confirm for Loretta and Lora, and possibly for Justin, that Dad is indeed faking his amnesia – a reality I still don’t want to believe. But they lived through it day in and day out for years, and the stories that flowed out of them after watching the film sounded very convincing. When is this all going to end?

[gallery columns="4" orderby="rand"]I finally made it out to California to show FORGETTING DAD to my family. While I was pretty hopeful they’d like it, I was still a bit nervous. Did we get the story right? Did we inadvertently twist anyone’s words the wrong way or cast someone in a bad light? Or more importantly, would the film trigger some new emotions that hadn’t yet come to the surface?

1st family: First stop – Los Angeles, or more correctly Santa Clarita. This is more or less where I grew up. We gathered at my brother Ben’s house (half-brother on my mother’s side – that’s why he’s not in the film), which just so happens to be the house we lived in when he was born when I was twelve. I shot my first Super 8 films of him back then, never imagining that I’d make a career of this.

Our twin sisters Anne and Jan came with their families, and some good family friends were there as well. There were lots of laughs about our clothes in the old home movies, the fake wood paneling on the old station wagon, etc., and lots of tears. The film really hit home. I could see the tension building in Anne’s face as the film progressed. The nods of her head said it all – there really is something more to the whole story than we’d all ever realized or wanted to admit.

Afterwards, the big question loomed in the air: How would Dad react to the film?
No one had an answer to the question, only more stories. Anne told about one incident during her visit to Dad’s two summers ago. One morning, Tracy set down a box of cereal near the edge of the table. Dad got furious and slammed the box across the room. Tracy tried to downplay the incident, claiming that Dad was having troubles with his vision, and misjudged the position of the box. But Anne said it was clearly another one of Dad’s explosions like we know so well from before his amnesia began, and which he has been trying so hard to contain in his new life.

Watching the film made my step-sister Gaye furious about the HIPPA (doctor-patient confidentiality) laws, which prevent families from gaining access to a family member’s medical records without that person’s consent. Having such access would have enabled us to know early on what the doctors were saying about Dad, and might have given us the insight to help him more.

There was consensus among everyone at the screening that we have the right to know what’s really going on with Dad, but no one really knows how to go about this. Sometimes I wish Justin and I had been more forceful when we drove up to see Dad, but he was such a frightened and beaten man that we simply didn’t have the heart to do it. Now I’m feeling once again that it’s up to me to confront him, and that the confrontation is inevitable thanks to the film.

The whole evening felt like some kind of fantastic blur that felt somehow very right. It was the support of my family that got me through the making of “Forgetting Dad,” and it meant a lot to me to have them think so highly of the finished film.

We’re happy to announce that we won an “honorable mention” at the Achtung Berlin – New Berlin Film Award festival in Berlin last week. The festival is dedicated to films made or financed in Berlin and Brandenburg. It was nice to finally show the film to our friends, family and colleagues in the local film scene, and to get some recognition for all our hard work.

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