Douglas Sirk Award
by Becky Tan

The Douglas Sirk Preis (Award) has been presented at the Filmfest Hamburg since 1995. It is awarded to extraordinary personalities who have made special contributions to film, in culture and industry.

Douglas Sirk was a film director with connections to Hamburg. He was born Hans Detlef Sierck in Hamburg-Eimsbüttel in 1897. He left Germany in 1937 in order to protect his Jewish wife from the politics of that time. They travelled through Europe and settled in the USA, where he changed his name to Douglas Sirk. He directed many successful films in the USA, beginning in 1943 up to IMITATION OF LIFE in 1959 with Lana Turner and Sandra Dee. In the 1960s he was back in Europe, residing not in Germany, but in Lugano, Switzerland. Still, he had a connection to Hamburg directing plays in the Thalia Theater.

This year the Douglas Sirk Award was to go to Ulrich Seidl, an Austrian director who has made over 15 films, his first successful film being GOOD NEWS in 1990. In connection with the award, two of Seidl’s films were shown at the Filmfest Hamburg: RIMINI and SPARTA. However, the Douglas Sirk Award was cancelled, due to Seidl’s film SPARTA, which was filmed in Romania, starring eight young Romanian boys. Supposedly, the conditions for filming were below any standards or requirements set up for working with children. As a result, SPARTA was cancelled to appear at the Toronto International Film Festival. It did show at the San Sebastian Film Festival, but Seidl cancelled his planned appearance there. In Hamburg the film was not shown in cinemas, but it screened at Filmfest Hamburg with Ulrich Siedl present at the showing. Hamburg considers this just an interruption and promises to present Seidl with the award when his next film, whatever that may be, shows in Hamburg.

Despite cancelling the Douglas Sirk Award this year, Douglas Sirk was very present at the festival, which showed the documentary: DOUGLAS SIRK – HOPE AS IN DESPAIR by Roman Hüben. Here we learn many more details about this director who has given his name to an award for the last 21 years. He died in 1987 in Lugano, Switzerland.

RIMINI, Ulrich Seidl 2022

The career of singer Richie Bravo (Michael Thomas) reached its peak long ago. Still, to finance his addictions, i.e., drinking in bars and playing the slot machine at Terry Bell, he relies on performances in hotels before elderly tourists who happen to be in town; Rimini’s on Italy’s west coast. It’s winter, cold and snowy; the beaches are empty, and his audiences are small. Usually dressed in an undershirt and a fur coat, on stage he shines in glittery suits. For a second source of income, he works as a gigolo or toyboy, sleeping with older women in these hotels. Halfway through this two-hour film, a young woman appears. It is his daughter Tessa (Tessa Göttlicher) who’s managed to locate him 18 years after he abandoned her and her mother. She demands money for the wasted years they survived without support. Parallel small plots involve the death of his mother, meeting up with his brother (Georg Friedrich), renting out his villa while he is away in Italy, going to his childhood home, and visiting his father.

RIMINI is over-long and repetitive, but still worth your time simply to experience lead actor Michael Thomas for whom the “role of Richie Bravo was especially created,” according to director Ulrich Siedl. There is practically no background music, but 18 songs carry us along, at least half of which are sung by Michael Thomas himself. The final scene shows Hans-Michael Rehberg, as Richie’s father, helpless in his nursing home. Perhaps this film ending was planned to honor actor Rehberg who died at age 79, shortly after this, his last role. RIMINI premiered at the 2022 Berlinale Film Festival.

SPARTA, Ulrich Seidl 2022

Ewald (Georg Friedrich), in his mid-40s, sees this as a time in life to make some changes which, in his case, means driving his car to Romania. He attempts to settle in and learn the language. He runs into kids on a playground and has a snowball fight with them. As he walks around the neighborhood, he finds an old, abandoned school. He and six to eight boys clean out the devastated school, which he reopens as a sport center where he teaches judo for free. He names it Sparta, based on the story of Spartacus. He seems to like young boys, but not to the extent of being a pedophile. However, we see the boys without shirts, or six of them in a tub of water or all eight in wet swimming shorts. The kids enjoy a free childhood, doing all that they wish, playing with little pigs, a white dog, little puppies, hanging out in the judo school – a situation they had never experienced. They are happy but slowly residents in the village wish to regain control.

SPARTA is a continuation of RIMINI in that Ewald is the brother of Richie (see above). There are several identical scenes of their father, played by Hans-Michael Rehberg, as well as elderly people sitting in a row, etc. For the first time, there was one original scene I had never viewed: a man sitting on a toilet, pulls out his penis for us all to see. After years of women showing their breasts, I presume the penis is now for showing.