Frederick began his career in visual media at 15 as photo instructor at a summer camp and then photo editor and photographer in high school. He graduated cum laude with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, in 1965. While there, his photo art was exhibited at the Davidson Art Gallery, and he made his first film as part of its film studies program. He entered the Masters Film program at UCLA in 1965 but moved to San Francisco the next year during the "summer of love." There he began a lifelong study of meditation, yoga, mystic arts, Sufism, and the esoteric traditions of the world’s religions, all while working in the top documentary film unit in the USA at KQED Public Television. There he made several films including A.C.T. Now (1968) which received a Cine Golden Eagle award for direction. In 1969 he started working on a feature documentary, Sunseed. He received a Master of Fine Arts from UCLA Film School in1973 for his direction of Sunseed. Its first showing was at the Palace of Fine Arts, San Francisco in 1974 and later had its New York premiere at the Whitney Museum in New York City, in the New American Filmmakers series, where it became the most viewed film in the history of the series.
He took on the name Amertat, which was given to him by one of his spiritual guides, Pir Vilayat Khan, while making the film. In 1988 Amertat made the film Elliott Porter’s World which brought him his second Cine Golden Eagle award.
After twenty years of filmmaking Amertat was forced to search for other ways to support his family and went into “retirement” from his film activities. Over the next few years, he was able to create a successful international distributorship and marketing company for Herbalife Nutrition (1988-present) and has become one of its top 50 independent distributors in the world as a Chairman’s Club member. He has lived in the USA, France, Italy, Greece, Turkey, India, and now resides in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, since 2006. He also maintains a residence in New York City. He has now come out of “retirement” and is proud to have completed his new feature film, Sunseed: The Journey
Filmography:
SunSeed: The Journey (2020)
Wynn Bullock Photographer (1978)
Dance to Glory (1977)
Zen in America (1977)
Sister (1976)
Elliott Porter’s World (1975)
Sunseed (1973)
Act Now (1968)
From Protest to Resistance, (1967)
Fidel (1967)
J. Krishnamurti, The Real Revolution—8 episodes (1966)