Mike Siegel

Mike Siegel was born in 1967 in Sindelfingen, Germany. As a little boy, Siegel was a child model and grew up at the local movie theatre where he watched more than 3000 films and he soon started collecting movie memorabilia. His early experiences with film making came through small jobs on the sets of his former neighbor Roland Emmerich's first four science-fiction movies. In 1992 Siegel moved to Munich where he studied film making and made his first documentaries. 1997 marked a turning point: He met US film maker Robert Rodriguez (El Mariachi, Sin City) who encouraged Siegel to shoot his $10.000 feature film debut Pendechos! on 16mm. Like Rodriguez, Siegel does all the jobs himself: Producing, directing, writing, photography and editing. In 2000 Siegel co-organizes a Sam Peckinpah festival in Padua, Italy. It includes the most complete retrospective to date and an exhibition of the director's life and films. Attending guest stars like James Coburn and Ali MacGraw agree to be part of a feature-length documentary Siegel plans on the director's life. Starring Ernest Borgnine, Kris Kristofferson and Senta Berger, Passion & Poetry - The Ballad of Sam Peckinpah starts shooting in 2003 in Mexico, Los Angeles, London & Berlin. In December 2003 Mike Siegel's accompanying photo-book on Peckinpah is published in Germany: Passion & Poetry - Sam Peckinpah in Pictures. The film Passion & Poetry - The Ballad of Sam Peckinpah premieres at the 2005 Munich Film Festival. After several screenings at international film festivals the film is released as a 2-disc special edition DVD in 2009. In 2002 Siegel started producing supplements for DVD releases of classic films and has already made a dozen documentaries on Italian Directors Sergio Sollima, Ferdinando Baldi, German actor Mario Adorf as well as many documentaries and featurettes for DVD / blu-ray releases of Sam Peckinpah films, the first being a featurette for the long expected Sony DVD of the restored Major Dundee (Sam Peckinpah, 1964). In 2007 Siegel co-produced a 2-disc special edition DVD for Peckinpah's Straw Dogs, formerly banned in Germany. Being a member of the oldest Opel GT-Club in Germany, Siegel starts filming Opel GT - Driving The Dream, a celebration of the cult sports car, in 2008. The DVD was released in 2010 and more Peckinpah-related projects followed: In 2010 the German Special Edition for The Deadly Companions (1961), 2011 saw the release of the UK / German blu-ray for Cross Of Iron (1976) and 2013 the French blu-ray for The Killer Elite (1975). In 2011 Siegel published his second book. Co-authored by Andrew Antoniades Steve McQueen: The Actor and His Films was published by Dalton Watson Fine Books in 2011. From 2012 - 2017 Siegel produced & directed more documentaries on Sam Peckinpah's films for international distribution, such as Junior Bonner (2017), Bring me the head of Alfredo Garcia (2013) and Convoy (2015). In 2016 he restored, re-edited and re-dubbed his feature film debut Pendechos (1997) for the Blu-ray release. Mike Siegel is also a writer of DVD booklets and a regular contributor to the UK / US magazine Cinema Retro. Working as a film historian he also recorded a number of audio-commentaries for international Blu-ray / DVD - releases.