Perhaps as important as the porn itself is the atmosphere of the festival, which is partly summed up with the word international – describing our readers here, too. International means people of all nationalities, but at this fest there’s also people of of varying levels of experience. There can be the casual viewer that just wants to ‘try’ a porn film festival, to see what it’s like to do something a little naughty that only Berlin can provide. There’s the hardcore, like me and many others on the festival, from the filmmakers to the enthusiasts to the programmers and workers. And there’s the mix of experience that I experienced Friday at the Berlin Porn short programme, where Berlin is porn.
It was understandably packed, as every filmmaker was there to support their own works and their fellow Berliners. I sat next to one pair that that had an explicit scene in one early film, which they were quite excited about. But the running dialogue they held throughout the rest of the programme clued me in that it was their first time at the porn rodeo.
“What is that?”
“I think it’s puppy play.”
“Oh! So there are dogs and owners!”
“How interesting!”
Dogfight wasn’t the only film that got astonished commentary by the pair. And you know what? It’s kind of beautiful. Beautiful that people in this city are adventurous enough to shoot a porn scene and not be completely enveloped in the scene themselves.
That’s what we’ve got here: porn for everyone. And that much was discussed at the “Facing Our Audience” panel that same day, where the five programmers – Paula Alamillo, Jürgen Brüning, Manuela Kay, Claus Matthes and Jochen Werner – fielded questions from the audience. One topic that came up is the labeling system used to mark films in the catalogue and whether that’s necessary in our queer, post-gender utopic Berlin. A fair enough discussion, ultimately (for me) leading to the keys being simply a way to orient the attendees (especially the newbies), not a system to label the audience.
And what of the films? Like the crowd and like every festival, mixed, but overwhelmingly good.
I won’t got through the entire Berlin Porn catalogue, but our city has a fair amount of talent to show off, with only two films feeling really out of place for me there.
We’ve written about how the festival presents stuff that you can even bring your mother to. But make sure to do your homework beforehand. Jan Soldat’s incredible Haftanlage 4651 was, as expected, wonderful, making the truly strange truly human. It was the opening film Mein Tag mit Lady Tarna by Chris Caliman that momentarily made me squirm – and only from the ideas presented, explicit it wasn’t. But in the end it was a superb pairing with Soldat, also humanizing something that we don’t often think about. And I highly recommend both films. And both films are also made by Berliners.
Gay porn production company Hand in Hand from the US also had a retrospective showing some incredible gems from the 1970s, from the quite dark and serious The Destroying Angel to the light, but equally, um, engaging Hothouse, which of all things included a super 8 hardcore sex scene with Andy Warhol superstar Joe Dallesandro – a super rare treat as his hardcore films are not easily tracked down.
God, we can’t escape porn here, but why would we want to? Well, the escape does come with the end, which is tonight. But here’s a happy one.
