Panorama 2013:
Free from Expectations

A first glance at your programme this year reveals, in particular, a large percentage of films from the USA.

Indeed, the Americans have an incredible six feature films and seven documentaries in the Panorama. What makes this even more surprising is that, whilst they were previously a stalwart of the section, they have been a much weaker presence during the last decade. But it seems - and we can also see this on a global level - that now is a good time for bolder projects to be realised. Shane Carruth's Upstream Color, for example, is almost an experimental film in the way it allows mad and inconceivable fantasies to see the light of day. American film hasn't been doing something like this for a long while. During the Bush era it was relatively conservative and opportunistic even though you would perhaps expect the polar opposite. Films during the Kohl years in Germany were also rather weak - it appears that conservative politics unfortunately leads to overly cautious filmmaking.

Can you really make such a direct connection to a country's politics?

To the political overtones, yes. Filling young people with fear has its consequences. The first generation that have been sold the future as a threat is now in their mid-thirties. Rather than reacting with rebellion, collars and ties have a newfound currency. My generation has been asking itself: what's wrong with them? Why don't they go a step further than we did? But now they're revealing their own brand of assertiveness which shows they don't care about my generation. Perhaps arrogance is a necessity in a certain phase in life to free yourself from patronising expectations.

Sex seems to be one of the dominant topics in this year's programme...

That's right. Lovelace from Oscar-winners Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman is also about sex. They depict the life of Linda Lovelace whose story was already shown in the 2005 Panorama in the documentary Inside Deep Throat (programme archive). It is a story of the first moving image porn superstar - up until then there had only been pin-up stars. Her life was somewhat typical: men put women on a pedestal in order to knock them off. James Franco, who is also appearing in two other films, has a cameo as Playboy boss Hugh Hefner. Incidentally, as co-director and cinematographer of Interior. Leather Bar. , Franco traces the sexually explicit scenes which were cut from William Friedkin's Cruising in 1980.

There will be another sexual sensation the following day - this time of the passionate variety and intriguingly free of the customary penetration. Mes séances de lutte (Love Battles) by Jacques Doillon is about the erotic fixation between two rural neighbours who repeatedly explore their desire for one another. Doillon doesn't celebrate sexuality with the typical, clichéd images but he doesn't withhold it either.

Directing Debuts with Cinematic Flair

Chemi Sabnis Naketsi, Don Jon’s Addiction and La Piscina are three of the eleven feature debuts in this year's programme. Linda Söffker, section director of Perspektive Deutsches Kino, has found it unusual this year that directors are abandoning their immediate personal surroundings and not just telling stories about family and a small circle of friends. To what extent does this observation hold true for the directing debuts in the Panorama?

There are also good examples of this development here. Youth by Tom Shoval uncovers the same fear of losing one's middle-class status in Israel as in Europe. He depicts a family where the father is unemployed and the mother doesn't earn enough money to feed them all, including their two adolescent sons. Even the flat in which the boys have always lived is at risk. The loss of standard of living constitutes a major threat to the sons. They decide to kidnap a girl and demand a ransom. But the plan goes awry because the victim's parents neither answer the phone nor report their child missing. The kidnappers have failed to take into account that orthodox families don't use the phone on the Sabbath...

The third Korean film in our programme is completely different. E J-yong, whose Yeobaewoodle (The Actresses, programme archive) screened in the Panorama 2010, is presenting his new film Behind the Camera. Instead of showing up on his own film-set, an eccentric director controls proceedings by Skype. Of course this creates huge confusion amongst the crew from the start as the typical Korean hierarchies are thrown into disarray. This leads to the Skype window being constantly reduced in size until it's in the very bottom corner of the screen. A very modern and very dryly entertaining meditation upon filmmaking at a time when everything is remote-controlled by handheld devices...

An Abundance of Form and Topics in Documentary

As is traditional, there are numerous artist portraits amongst the documentaries...

Funnily enough, that seems to be a classic that's crept in. I'm quite critical of the large amount of biopics out there because most of them fail to go beyond hagiography. That's why this year's programme only contains true rediscoveries. Roland Klick, for example, who had such a big influence on German cinema. Or Paul Bowles, an often overlooked figure of the Beat Generation.
Salma is the inspiring portrait of the emancipation of a Tamil poet. The Muslim Tamils lock up their daughters from the time of their first period until they are married. For nine years Salma refused to accept an arranged marriage. With the help of her mother she published poems during her imprisonment and eventually, through her celebrity, became a local politician. It's a tremendous story of a woman and of liberation.