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Roland Klick, born July 4, 1939, in Hof, started to study dramatics and German studies but left university before his graduation to start a career in the film business. In 1962/63, he worked as a cinematographer for Rolf Schünzel's documentary film "München – Tagebuch eines Studenten" at Deutsches Institut für Film und Fernsehen. Klick then finished his first short films and the 50-minute long feature film "Jimmy Orpheus" (1966) before he made his full-length feature film debut with the drama "Bübchen" ("Little Vampire") in 1968.
Despite its controversial subject – "Bübchen" tells the story of a ten-year old boy who kills his sister and hides her dead body –, actress Renate Roland won a German film award for her performance, while Klick himself was celebrated by colleagues and critics as one of most promising young directors of German cinema.
Klick's next film, the thriller "Deadlock" (1970) starring Mario Adorf that was filmed in Israel, was made in a completely different style than the metropolitan drama "Bübchen": The story of three gangsters, who fight for the loot of a bank robbery in a ghost town in the desert, caters to the aesthetic of the genre of the Italo-Western film. Although the critics' reactions to the film were ambivalent because of the film's focus on action film elements, Klick still won the German film award as "Best director". Nevertheless, the slowly and laconically narrated film "Deadlock" did not catch on as anticipated with German movie goers.
Three years later, Klick, who time again distanced himself from the artistic values of New German Cinema and emphasized that he wanted to make entertaining movies, finished "Supermarkt" ("Supermarket", 1973), a milieu drama that closely follows US genre conventions. The title song of the film that tells the story of a teenager who more and more turns to crime was written by Marius Müller Westernhagen (as Marius West), who later also dubbed the leading actor's voice. This film was again highly praised by critics; it won Roland Klick the German film award as "Best director" and an actor's award for Walter Kohut.
After "Lieb Vaterland magst ruhig sein" ("Dear Fatherland Be at Peace", 1975; German film award for cinematographer Jost Vacano), an adaptation of Johannes Mario Simmel's novel, and the documentary film "Derby Fever USA" (1979; German film award in Silver) about horse racing, Klick was appointed to make a movie from the bestseller "Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo" ("We Children from Bahnhof Zoo") in 1981, but abandoned the project because of creative differences with the producer only two weeks before the first day of shooting. It took Roland Klick two years to finish his alternative project "White Star“ that was fixed at short notice because of leading actor Dennis Hopper's cocaine addiction and his resulting drop-outs. In 1983, the film hit the movie screen in the form of a fragment. Again, Klick won the German film award in the category of directing, but commercially this film also proved to be a failure.
The comedy "Schluckauf" (1987 to 1992) about a young woman from the province, who moves to Berlin to become a photo model, has been Roland Klick's last production for the movie screen. At the beginning of the 1990s, Klick retreated as a writer to Ireland, where he still lives today.
Under a pseudonym (not yet revealed) he still worked several times for television in the USA. In Germany, he directed several episodes of the series "Drei Damen vom Grill" (1992, as Bernhard Stein); uncredited, he was involved in Frieder Schlaich's "Otomo" (1999).
In 2013 the documentary "Roland Klick - The Heart is a Hungry Hunter" was released, in which Klick talks in detail about his work with director Sandra Prechtel. He was also interviewed for Dominik Graf's documentaries "Verfluchte Liebe Deutscher Film" ("Doomed Love: A Journey Through German Genre Films", 2016) and "Offene Wunde Deutscher Film" ("Open Wounds: A Journey Through German Genre Films", 2017).
In 2017, Roland Klick was awarded the VG Bild-Kunst Honorary Prize for Lifetime Achievement at the Metropolis German Director's Prize.