Camera
Sven Kirsten
Born 1955-08-27 · Hamburg, Germany
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.
Acting credits
NRBy the early 1990s, Tiki bars were nearly extinct, and ceramic drinking vessels known as Tiki mugs were vanishing into thrift stores and swap meets. But in Venice Beach, California, a small group of collectors, artists, and enthusiasts saw something more. Art. Cabali and the Tiki Mug Obsession follows two intertwined stories. It traces the history of Tiki culture through its iconic collectible Tiki mugs, exploring how boutique publishing and a fledgling internet gave rise to a passionate, global community. Second, it tells the story of Fini, an obsessive Tiki mug collector, whose dedication inspired Cabali, a modernist speakeasy Tiki bar in Oro Valley, AZ.
Cabali And The Tiki Mug Obsession
2025
NRArmchair 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.
The DVD of Tiki Vol. 1 - Paradise Lost
2012
A young sex worker in search of love...
Nur ein kleines bisschen Liebe
1977