Rick Litvin is a filmmaker, songwriter, photographer and educator. His work has screened at the Museum of Modern Art, IFC Center, MTV, VH-1 of MTV Networks and has been featured on NPR’s All Things Considered, Weekend Edition, Morning Edition, Public Radio International, The BBC, CBS, as well as being distributed internationally. Rick has generated and directed original cable television program content in collaboration with The 3M Corporation and Time Warner and has worked in the music industry as a songwriter on eight releases by Lucy Kaplansky (The Tide, Flesh and Bone, Ten Year Night AFIM Best Pop Album of the Year 2000, Every Single Day AFIM Best Pop Album of the Year 2002, The Red Thread, Over the Hills - 11,965,000 streams on Spotify for the track "More than This," Reunion and Everyday Street). His work has been included in a variety of anthologies and has been reviewed across a spectrum of old media and new media publications including the New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Irish Times and Rolling Stone.
Rick produced 10 music videos for Joan Baez's 2019 Grammy Award Nominated release, "Whistle Down the Wind.” Of those videos, ”The President Sang Amazing Grace" premiered on The Atlantic (distinguished by "The Atlantic Selects" category with over 605,000 YouTube plays and over 1,300,000 million plays on Joan Baez’s Facebook page since launch). The music video of Joan Baez’s version of Joe Henry’s "Civil War" premiered on the Smithsonian Magazine Website with a feature story about the production. “The President Sang Amazing Grace” was published in book form (September, 2019) by Cameron + Company (distributed by Abrams Books).
Rick directed Shawn Colvin’s Sony Records music video, “Steady On,” which was awarded 5 stars by VH1 for her Grammy Award winning debut recording, “Steady On.” He has also directed, produced, or, co-produced over 190 music videos, co-authored a segment of Amos Poe’s feature film/installation “Empire II,” produced and directed the Shawn Colvin music video of “Ricochet in Time” which premiered on Billboard. Additional songwriting credits that have been featured on network television (NBC, CBS, PBS) include, "Guilty as Sin" which played on NBC's hit television series "Ed." Rick directed the Kickstarter launch video (Kickstarter Staff Pick) for The Pine Hill Project's release, Tomorrow You're Going, which raised over $85,000 in 30 days. Further, he directed the band’s first music video of the Gillian Welch song, “Wichita,” which was profiled in the international online magazine of popular culture, PopMatters. Rick recently produced and directed the new Lucy Kaplansky music video for her version of the Roxy Music classic, “More Than This.”
Rick is an Arts Professor at New York University’s Undergraduate Department of Film and Television. He has worked as an educational consultant for Tribeca Films/Maker Studios, has presented lectures and seminars on video, film and music video production at a number of college campuses and conferences around the country and abroad. Rick was part of The Season Series at La Pietra, Florence, Italy (2018) with his presentation of Word(s), Image(s) and Instinct. At the Clive Davis Center for Recorded Music, he was a guest lecturer in an ASCAP-sponsored songwriter series. He works with the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts (FAMU) in Prague, Cz and the NYU Global Tisch affiliated 35mm production program. In 2019, he introduced First Person Narrative at the Story Movements conference at American University. Rick has been working with developing the Cinematic Arts program at Effat University (the first private institution of higher education for women in Saudi Arabia) and has been a guest lecturer at the Jeddah, SA campus while continuing his work with Effat throughout the pandemic on Zoom.
As an educator, he has created multiple classes at the Tisch School of the Arts ranging from “Making the Documentary” in Dublin, Ireland, the “Summer High School Filmmakers Workshop," “Short Commercial Forms,” "First Person Narrative" and his research based work in developing alternative interdisciplinary approaches to the narrative form. He was invited to create the curriculum and teach an international program connecting visiting young Emirati filmmakers to New York (2015) in collaboration with NYU Abu Dhabi, Image Nation and the Tisch School of the Arts. Rick's new program/initiative, First Person Narrative was first introduced (2017) in partnership with the Office of Strategic Initiatives, Ghetto Film School and Future Artists. The First Person Narrative initiative connects interdisciplinary first person perspectives of the narrative form.The initial Quest to Learn/Future Filmmakers program was developed and supported with a Dean's development grant. The program teaches students how to tell their own unique stories from their own unique point of view with a focus on interdisciplinary first person perspectives of the narrative form.
Rick has incubated multiple partnerships with New York City Public High Schools (Quest to Learn, High School for Environmental Studies, High School for Art and Design) and offered a week long collaborative program (2016 and 2017) that invited a group of New York City high school students to engage with UGFTV faculty and students. He also worked with film and media related curriculum development, mentorship and arts related educational opportunities for underrepresented students in the New York City public high school system. Rick is part of a new working group that has launched the New York University College and Career Lab (2018) connecting New York City area middle school and high school students with five schools at NYU (Stern, Law, Steinhardt, Tandon and Tisch). In 2021, the College and Career Lab expanded into the Explorations and Immersive track and introduced First Person Narrative as the core Tisch curricular offering. Rick was invited to lecture for the Lang Arts Scholars in a further expansion of his work in the Tisch Arts Lab (2021).
Rick teaches a range of production classes at New York University including Sight and Sound Filmmaking, Intermediate Narrative, First Person Narrative, Experimental Production, Advanced Production and presents the master lecture for Language of Film in the history and criticism area. Over the years, he has provided a key leadership role in developing a number of new curricular initiatives and courses and was responsible for transitioning the department’s signature production class, Sight and Sound Filmmaking, from celluloid to digital. Rick has served as the chair of the Curriculum Committee and was the Executive Director of Production Studies for over 10 years.
He is the recipient of multiple grants, commissions and awards (including the CINE Golden Eagle), as well as receiving multiple recommendations for both the distinguished teaching award at NYU and multiple nominations for the David Payne-Carter Award for teaching excellence. Rick was a recent nominee for both the Angela Davis/W.E.B. Dubois Faculty Award at New York University (2018) and the New York University Making a Difference Award (2020).
He is a member of the UFVA (University Film and Video Association), ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers) and was on the Advisory Council of the board at the Institute of Play.