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David Ridgen is an award-winning independent Canadian filmmaker born in Stratford, Ontario. He has worked for CBC Television, MSNBC, NPR, TVOntario and others.
Ridgen assisted his brother Robert to make Canadian Images of Vietnam in 1990. The compilation, produced and researched by Robert, was acquired by the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography in 1991. From February to April 2013, Canadian Images of Vietnam was featured in the National Gallery of Canada installation, "Clash: Conflict and its Consequences".
Ridgen's first feature drama, Memento, was released to critical acclaim in 1996 on a riverboat in Kingston, Ontario.
In 2000, Ridgen's critically acclaimed documentary about Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, On the Borders of Gardens, earned him a prestigious Canadian Association of Journalists Award.
A 2003 film, Buried Alive, made for CBC Television, was about a group of people seeking spiritual enlightenment by digging their own graves and being buried in them overnight. This film won a Bronze Plaque Award at the Columbus International Film and Video Festival.
Ridgen made Return to Mississippi in 2004 for CBC Television, about the potential for a trial in the case of the three Mississippi Burning victims: civil rights workers Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman. During the production of Return to Mississippi, Ridgen learned of the 1964 Klan murder of two 19 year-old African-American men, Henry Hezekiah Dee and Charles Eddie Moore. This led him to produce his next and probably most famous film, Mississippi Cold Case, a documentary so compelling it led Mississippi state officials to re-open their investigation into the case, which resulted in Klansman James Ford Seale being convicted of conspiracy and kidnapping and handed three concurrent life sentences. Ridgen and Mississippi Cold Case won many awards, including the IRE Top Medal for Investigative Reporting, a Gemini for Best Director, a CAJ for Best Investigative Program, several Yorkton Golden Sheafs including Best of Festival, a CINE Golden Eagle and an Emmy Nomination for Best Investigative Documentary.
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