Ticino Film Commission
25.07.2022 . Locarno Film Festival

Roman Hüben's documentary DOUGLAS SIRK - HOPE AS IN DESPAIR will be presented in its WORLD PREMIERE as part of the retrospective of the 75th Locarno Film Festival

The documentary pays tribute to the giant of classic American cinema, who retired to Lugano in the last years of his life and to whom this year's Locarno Film Festival retrospective is dedicated: "Tutto Douglas Sirk"

Born in Hamburg, Germany, in 1897, the master of melodrama Douglas Sirk achieved fame overseas by making some of the best films of classic Hollywood. Hired by the Universal production company, in his long career he specialised in making films full of twists and romantic plots that moved millions of viewers. Some of his films have made cinema history, first and foremost 'Magnificent Obsession' and 'The Mirror of Life'. One of his most ardent admirers was the German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder. In the early 1960s, Sirk decided to give up directing and moved to Castagnola (Lugano), where he lived for almost twenty years. Retreat chosen for the last years of his life, marked by incessant and little-known creative and intellectual activity. Today he is buried with his wife in Lugano.

 

The documentary DOUGLAS SIRK - HOPE AS IN DESPAIR, the result of an international co-production by Pic Film (in Manno - Lugano), with the support of the Ticino Film Commission, offers a portrait in the form of an investigation of this master of melodrama. His life was the ultimate melodrama, from which all of his films took inspiration.Through the testimonies of those close to him and previously unheard stories from his wife’s journal, we get closer to this man shrouded in mystery.

 

As with the documentary film Loving Highsmith by Eva Vitija (presented this year at the Locarno Film Festival in the Panorama Suisse section and opening film of the 57th Solothurn Days) on the famous American writer of psychological thrillers Patricia Highsmith, who spent the last years of her life in Ticino, this work provides a new testimony of Ticino as a host to great cultural figures. A land rich in contrasts between countryside and lake, mountain and city, which over time has been able to attract, inspire and offer a 'refuge' to many personalities from the worlds of art, literature, music, cinema and culture in general, think of personalities such as Borromini and Botta, but also Hermann Hesse and, indeed, Patricia Highsmith.

 

Screenings

Wednesday 10 August at 14:00 - GranRex, Introduced by Roman Hüben

Thursday 11 August at 21:00 - PalaVideo @ Palazzo dei Congressi Muralto

 

Purchase tickets at the following link.

 

Film Teaser

 

Director Roman Hüben

Born 1990 in Cologne (Germany). A German national who grew up in Switzerland. In 2014, he graduated in film at ECAL (Ecole Cantonale d'Art de Lausanne). He has directed several short films, including Io ho un Potere (2013) and Villa Ventura (2017). Douglas Sirk - Hope As In Despair (2022) is his first feature film.

 

Douglas Sirk - Biography

Born Detlef Sierck, (Hamburg, 1897 - Lugano, 1987), after spending his childhood in Hamburg and Denmark, the country his parents came from, he devoted himself to theatre in Germany. He was later employed by Universum Film AG (UFA), making his feature film debut with April, April! (1935), and later made Schlussakkord (Final Accord, 1936) and La Habanera (1937). On the run from Nazi Germany, like many other European directors, he made his mark with Hitler's Madman (1943) and Summer Storm (1944). From here he divided his time between thrillers and comedies, with sporadic forays into other genres, such as westerns (Taza, Son of Cochise, 1954). In the United States he took on the name Douglas Sirk and from the early 1950s worked under contract at Universal. In 1953, All I Desire opened the great cycle of melodramas - including titles such as Magnificent Obsession (1954), All That Heaven Allows (1955), Written on the Wind (1956) and Imitation of Life (1959) - that also won over some European critics, thanks to their ability to explore American society through an anti-realist gaze, absolute aesthetic refinement and an unprecedented feminist sensibility. On his return to Europe, Sirk settled in Lugano, Switzerland, resuming his theatrical activity in Germany and teaching at the Hochschule für Film und Fernsehen (HFFM) in Munich, where he supervised the making of three short films.

 

The film, in whose production several Ticino professionals participated, is supported by the Ticino Film Commission.

 

The documentary is produced by Pic Film (in Manno, Lugano) in co-production with Berlin Producers Media (Germany), Acqua Alta (France) and La Bête (France) and with the television stations SRG SSR, ZDF ARTE (Germany) and Ciné+ (France).

 

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