Hank Nelken

Hank was born in Greenville, Mississippi and went to high school in Dallas, Texas. His interest in filmmaking was piqued at an early age by the local theater productions his parents starred in and by sixth grade, he was shooting and editing his own video productions starring any neighborhood kid who would work for cold cuts. In seventh grade, he started a video business shooting weddings and Bar Mitzvahs to pay for the equipment he needed to make his increasingly complex productions, including "Forever Young," a fifteen minute dramatic short about the perils of drunk driving that won Grand Prize in the National PTA Video Contest. His youthful passion for filmmaking culminated in his acceptance to the USC School of Cinema-Television. Upon graduating film school, Nelken wrote and directed "Fifteen Minutes," a short film that premiered at the USC First Look Festival to rave reviews. Afterwards, he partnered with writer Greg DePaul.