Sven Kirsten Movies, TV Shows, and Filmography
Sven Kirsten
Camera
Biography
Sven Kirsten was born in 1955 in the port town of Hamburg, Germany. He was supposedly conceived on a freighter of his grandfather's Hamburg-Chicago line between America and Germany (those were long trips). The sailor's bars of the Reeperbahn red light district and the curiosities of the Hamburg Anthropology Museum formed the fertile soil to inspire Sven to follow the call to other distant shores in 1980. After a brief stint at the San Francisco Art Institute, he continued his education as cinematographer at the American Film Institute in Los Angeles. Here he fell in love with the aesthetic extremes of L.A. In parallel to lighting and shooting music videos and features with Tom Waits, Sergio Mendes or Robert De Niro, he began to pursue his hobby of urban archeology. Over the last ten years he has photographed and collected the remnants of the vanishing Tiki cult in America. He hopes that his Book of Tiki adequately represents the visual seductiveness of this unique, never-before-recognized facet of American pop culture. When not shooting cable TV movies in Europe, Sven lives with his 9 year old son, Diego, in his hilltop home overlooking the Silverlake reservoir in the center of Los Angeles.
Filmography Movies
Acting
Nur ein kleines bisschen Liebe
A young sex worker in search of love...
The DVD of Tiki Vol. 1 - Paradise Lost
Armchair traveling to the most exotic chapter of American pop culture! Come fly with us and relive the rise and fall of polynesian pop. Be there. See the places and the people. Hear the stories from eye witnesses and real tiki aficionados like Martin Denny, Leroy Schmaltz & Bob van Oosting, Eric Askew, the Bali Hai Boys, Sven Kirsten, Otto von Stroheim, Shag, Beachbum Berry and many more. The DVD OF TIKI, Vol. I “Paradise Lost” explores the origins of the myth of the Souths Seas paradise and follows a nation on their transition from the puritan 1950s to the sexual revolution of the 70s. The Sixties, the heyday of Tiki offered wild island lifestyle with exotic sounds and intoxicating concoctions without endangering the given moral and social rules at that time.
Production
Beyond Desire
Rita is a sexy call girl in a red Corvette convertible who just met Ray. Ray is an ex-con just released after serving 14 years for a killing he claims he was framed for. When these two get together, sparks fly and temperatures rise. But Ray has a reason not to trust Rita - $1 million has been stashed somewhere in Las Vegas and Ray knows everyone wants it almost as much as they want him dead. When everyone has a hidden agenda, who do you trust?
Love Crash
Restaurant critic Ina is on the verge of marrying the wealthy son of an entrepreneur Clemens Kehl. But then she runs into the car of smart Gunnar. With consequences: After the accident, she wakes up with no memory in the hospital again! Under the name Jula they try to get her true identity back on track...
Beyond Desire
Rita is a sexy call girl in a red Corvette convertible who just met Ray. Ray is an ex-con just released after serving 14 years for a killing he claims he was framed for. When these two get together, sparks fly and temperatures rise. But Ray has a reason not to trust Rita - $1 million has been stashed somewhere in Las Vegas and Ray knows everyone wants it almost as much as they want him dead. When everyone has a hidden agenda, who do you trust?
Mistress
A comedy about a screenwriter (Wuhl) whose old movie script is read by a producer (Landau) and the search for financial backers begins. But it seems that each money source (Aiello, DeNiro, Wallach) has his own mistress that he wants put into the film. Gradually, the screenwriter is forced to make changes to his script to accommodate these backers until he finally sees no semblance of his original ideas in the writing.
Heart of Stone
A psychological thriller about a married women who has an affair with a charming young man and gets involved in a series of murders not knowing if the killer is her lover or her husband or someone else.
Play Time
Lindsey and Geena spend some time together by the pool while their husbands play golf. After talking about their fantasies they begin to enact a few of them for each other. Soon they incorporate Lindsey's husband Joe into their intimate games. When straight-laced Brad finds out what his wife and friends have been doing he blows up, threatening their marriages and friendships.
Roommate Wanted
From the affluent sidewalks of Rodeo Drive and the skies high above Beverly Hills. Can she really get her room mates to do what she wants? When they finally give in to temptation, they start to see a side of Cindy they never imagined.
Slam Dance
When framed for the murder of a sultry blonde, an underground cartoonist is drawn into a web of corruption, blackmail and deceit.
Teresa's Tattoo
Mathematician Teresa just wanted to study during the College spring break. But her friends, who want her to live a little, drag her out to parties. The next thing she knows, she has been drugged, kidnapped, made a redhead, tattooed, and wearing leather?!? Her captors seem to be the most inept crooks ever. They seem to have a plan, if only she could figure out why it involves her.
Bad Painter
Albert Oehlen steps behind the camera to present a portrait of himself, in life and at work, albeit substituted by actor and similarly brazen iconoclast Udo Kier, with musician Kim Gordon as his inner self, interviewer and judge.