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Father's Prayer
Germany 2010 | 13 min | S16 mm (35mm) | Cinemascope (1:2.35) | color
Direction: André Hörmann
Cinematography: Thomas Bergmann
Sound: Chad Cline
Editing: Vincent Assmann
Sounddesign/Mixing: Martin Frühmorgen
Production: Hörmann Filmproduktion
It’s always the same hope: a boxing club in Chicago, where young black men are eager to beat each other up in order to make it out of the ghetto, to have some authority outside or simply to vent their aggressions. But in this case it’s father and son who are sparring, Kenneth Sims senior and Kenneth Sims junior. The father, an impressive giant, has not only put his son under an obligation by giving him his name, but has turned him into a projection surface for all his own dreams and wishes. He sacrifices himself for him; he is to have a better life some day. It’s his desperate struggle against the power of the street with its wild promises of drugs at every corner and the quick money that’s there for the taking that moves the audience. The silent observations of the boy evoke Hollywood boxing movies like “Rambo” or “Raging Bull”, largely owing to Thomas Bergmann’s painter-like cinematography, which transforms the gritty streets into fevered imagages.
(CK from the Festival catalogue of DOK-Leipzig)