Matthew Patrick

Matthew Patrick is a bold and innovative creative professional working in the fields of film, photography and environmental art. Throughout his film career, ranging from shorts and webisodes to full-length features, Matthew has served as director, but often times is the writer, cinematographer, editor and producer as well. 

Matthew was born in Michigan to a Japanese mother and an American father and raised in Japan, India and the US., and thus considers himself a citizen of the world. “Because I often did not understand the languages of the countries where I lived, I became an astute observer, able to pick up visual cues to help interpret different situations.” This ability has contributed significantly to his work as a visual artist.

He made TRIPTYCH as an undergraduate at Hampshire College which won a STUDENT ACADEMY AWARD, and gave him his first trip to Hollywood and to the Motion Picture Academy.

Upon graduation, Matthew moved to a New York City where he lived in a very raw loft in Soho and joined a vibrant independent film and art scene. He honed his skills in directing actors by studying with Stella Adler. He completed his first feature film ATRAPADOS (Trapped), which premiered at the Telluride Film Festival. ATRAPADOS stars Julio Torresoto, who weighed 200 pounds at the beginning of shooting, who then worked out and starved himself so that in the final scene, he w as transformed and weighed 120 pounds.

Matthew moved to Hollywood to attend the American Film Institute, where he received his MFA for Directing. The dramatic short film he made there, GRAFFITI, won numerous 1st place awards at international film festivals and was nominated for an Academy Award©.

Among the prestigious venues where his work has been screened are the Museum of Modern Art in New York, The Kennedy Center in Washington, DC and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco.

He is the recipient of an NEA Independent Filmmaker’s Grant and was selected as a Directing Fellow at the Sundance June Lab, where he worked alongside Stanley Kramer and Robert Redford. He shot scenes from the script SHACKLES, which featured Joe Morton and Jane Kaszmeric.

Matthew graduated to making multimillion dollar films, with the thrillers, HIDER IN THE HOUSE, featuring Gary Busey shortly after his Academy Award Nomination. Unfortunately 5 days after completing principal photography, Busey fell off his motorcycle and severely damaged his brain. HIDER IN THE HOUSE is his last great performance.

Matthew is an active member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, where he created and led the Future of Short Film sub-committee and has served on its Short Film/Feature Animation Category Executive Committee for over 25 years. He is a current member of the Director’s Guild of America.

As a still photographer, Matthew has taken hundreds of thousands of photos, exercising his keen eye and developing a distinctive style, whether the subject is a landscape, a person riding the subway or a futurist vision created by compositing many of his images.

In the mid 1990’s Matthew purchased 10 parcels of pristine desert wilderness in Joshua Tree that sits adjacent to the national park. His 100 acre property is used for photo and film shoots, and is the location for two of his upcoming film projects. The boulders have inspired him to create art in the form of massive, environmental multimedia installations.

Matthew Patrick currently lives in Hollywood with his wife, son and daughter.