What is consistently visible is a return to patterns that once struck us as impressive. In the past three years, we’ve been experiencing an abandonment of the conventional narrative. InYe (The Night), young Chinese director Zhou Hao harks back stylistically 15 or 20 years, to early Wong Kar Wai and the emotional world of Rainer Werner Fassbinder – with the editing, with the camera. I recognise a number of interconnections, and in this case especially, it’s amazing. Zhou Hao is 21 years old and a native of the People’s Republic of China, where access to international film isn’t the best, and yet makes a film reminiscent of films older than he is. It illustrates the fact that the subjects really are in the air, and that they can rematerialize, again and indisputably – something that Ye achieves boldly and fantastically, with regards to both aesthetics and content.

The Risks of Emancipation

As usual, GLBT film is a key aspect in the programme. How important is it that Panorama has supported, visualised and reflected the emancipation process over the years?

Now we have American films that emerge from luxurious, top-notch situations in the movement. But after emancipation, the agenda is full of totally ordinary problems, and the luxury of an ordinary life is the exception. In most cultures, homosexuality still isn’t recognised as innate, it’s seen as a disturbance from outside that must be warded off. It’s linked with the application of sexual formatting as an instrument of power within national and social structures. It’s a sore subject because of the futility in asserting oneself against it. Sexuality is used to categorise people, to keep them within a certain range of behaviour. And homosexuality is just one victim of the general attitude towards sexuality and its misuse. It’s consistently a topic in Panorama, and for some, it’s even a reason to make a film. For a long time, the festivals of the world looked the other way, and our programme has always been a testament to it. That’s why we had something of a special status as early as the eighties, with all the positive and negative aspects that go along with it. Some said that we were campaigning, or doing something dishonest, just because we showed how things are.

You’re essentially describing a basic configuration in cinema. The better films have this kind of structure: An individual has to come to terms with something, and she usually has something that appeals to us, otherwise there’s no reason for us to listen to her story. That’s how we interact, because we want to learn from and be inspired by one another. In the Greek film Na kathese ke na kitas (Standing Aside, Watching), it’s a young woman who leaves the city and returns to the countryside. The place has changed and now there’s a dreadful and violent patriarch in charge. How can she reformat this little world in such a way that she can live there? This classic problem does actually pop up in a number of films. In Bai Mi Zha Dan Ke (The Rice Bomber), a Taiwanese farmer becomes a terrorist because the government set the course wrong. The class situations haven’t changed much; it’s more about power structures. Who has the power, and what are they doing with it? Is power in any way malleable? It’s these kinds of greater issues that are visible in both the Indian films, for instance, where the classes are called castes.

In Highway, a woman is kidnapped accidentally. She is of a higher caste, while the thieves – who actually only wanted to steal a big car – are of a lower one, and are actually only allowed to steal within their own caste or lower. Then they’re in a pickle because they’ve kidnapped a higher caste individual. A fantastic Bollywood production that – somewhat unusually – stars a woman. In Papilio Buddha, the gang rapes – which also only take place caste-downwards - are also the background. A woman of higher caste is never raped by men of a lower one; that’s the system and it’s a systematic problem. The film tackles it and revolts against it. Last Hijack tells the story of fishermen with empty nets. They have no desire at all to break the law, but are recruited by pirates and slip into crime. The same goes for Bing Du (Ice Poison), in which a poverty stricken farmer in Myanmar becomes a taxi driver for drug couriers.

In 2014, the Berlinale is putting an emphasis on the documentary. In your eyes, how reasonable is the categorical separation of fiction and documentary film in this day and age?

We don’t separate the categories. Panorama Dokumente shows films that are more documental, but that needn’t be documentaries. Last Hijack makes use of re-enacted scenes and animations, so a mixture of different elements. In Der Kreis (The Circle), there are also whole scenes that are re-enacted by actors, and the real protagonists make their statements in interviews. Today the formats all go topsy-turvy. Fiction film has a tendency towards being “based on a true story” this year. And in fact, the documental and the fictional are at close quarters. The distinction between the main programme and Dokumente in Panorama is mainly designed for the market, a navigation tool for the buyers. In the nineties we put our weight behind bringing the documentary film back to cinema – which it had completely disappeared from. That had to do with developments in other media – especially in television, where the focus was increasingly on opinions and statements. The situation has improved since then.