Matthias Glasner

How hard can it be to find Matthias Glasner in a café where there are only three male customers, one of whom I know anyway? Let's just call it a close encounter of the third attempt! But with my face recognition software now rebooted and coffees to hand, the platform is open for a film fan's film fan!

Just coming off his psycho-drama "Gnade", Glasner is now "working on a film about the creation of the universe from the Big Bang to... No! Just kidding! I'm a total Terrence Malick fan. Jürgen Vogel and I didn't name our production company Badlands for nothing. It took us a minute to decide. No other director does what he does: he's so idiosyncratic."

Prompted by the original question, whether he was in Cannes this year, Glasner, who admits to "being a long-distance fan: some of the most important films for me, 'The Conversation', 'Taxi Driver', 'Apocalypse Now' – they all won in Cannes", expounds further on the man who is clearly more than an inspiration: "Malick shows us man is not the whole thing, as Jean Renoir said, but part of something. Malick can be just as interested in the wind in the grass as the person. He leaps boundaries in cinemas. He writes such great voice overs: 'Badlands', 'Days of Heaven'. He's a really good author."

His love of film started at a very early age and, as usual, the parents are to blame! In Glasner's case, for not knowing their son was "going to the cinema in the Turkish district straight after school! They showed Turkish action and melodrama, Japanese monster films, Kung-fu: I went every day. And they had non-stop screenings!" We both pause for a nostalgia break, for those days when you could go in and out as you pleased, with double features too. "You never knew where the film was when you went in, but it didn't matter because you sat there till you got back to your starting point," Glasner explains for those too young to know. "I'd watch two, three, films, not caring what was on, as long as it was loud, colorful, action. These are the roots of my films! They're basically genre variations, crime and genre."

For Glasner, there is no other art form to match cinema, and he wishes his fellow filmmakers would sometimes 'get over themselves', being too bound up in "social comment. I call it Bad Conscience cinema. It's like they are saying 'I know I must do something, not exploit, atone for the original sin of the German people!' The core of German filmmakers is a bad conscience!"

And now some Shock! Horror! because Glasner is riding a very different groove: "I want to do sci-fi and horror," says Glasner. "The Fantasy Filmfest is as important for me as the Berlinale. They show the most innovative fantasy films. The makers have little money and have to use their imagination. Watching a horror film is a whole body experience. I come out and the ground is moving!"

He made his first film with friends, at the age of sixteen, telling me "I knew I wanted to do this. I've worked since then in every film job possible, learning on set, not in film school. I also wrote my own scripts."

Not that he needed pressing, but Glasner cites Jim Jarmusch and the latter's "Stranger Than Paradise" as a key experience. "I met him in Hamburg. My girlfriend worked in NY for him for a couple of years. He is my role model. He's never 'gone Hollywood', keeps his rights, writes his own stuff, is very human and friendly on set. He never shouted. My first film, 'Schicksal und Zufall', is very Jim Jarmusch!"

Throwing himself into 1990s pop culture, Glasner turned out "Die Mediocren", "Sexy Sadie", and "Fandango", all of which "were my first real three features, all having Berlinale premieres. They're a kind of trilogy for me: pop culture, violence, sex – all without a bad conscience. 'Sexy Sadie' is a total B-movie, crime, black and white. 'Fandango' is gangsters, models, sex. It was liberating and also different for Germany." And how did they go down? "People looked at me like I smelt bad, for not following Wim Wenders or casting Bruno Ganz. Bit of dirt and filth in the cinemas, yeah!"

"I have two tracks," Glasner continues, "exploitation cinema and hard core arthouse. Both run parallel, sometimes fight one another, sometimes combine, both quite outside the mainstream. Kim Ki-duk or Lars von Trier for arthouse, and Malick of course. 'Der freie Wille' ('The Free Will') was the first time I tried combining the two."

This "story of a rapist belongs to exploitation and I made it as radical arthouse. The film is almost three hours, has no music, nothing to make it light and easy and romantic. That's when I think I was born as a filmmaker. This is what interests me for the future, combining these two directions."

Glasner's next project is an untitled sci-fi film, set in a parallel universe, a multiverse, which "I want to combine with a cinema that goes more radical ways. I've always produced my own films, except for 'Fandango'. It's no question about not having ultimate control. I always take a risk, often commercial, with my own head! Jürgen Vogel and I, we want to do our own things the way we want it, so we need economic and artistic freedom."

Once behind the camera, Glasner likes to do the same for his actors, "give them a lot of space. It's about creating an atmosphere to let their creativity flow. It's not about making a product but a team going on a journey. They're not just costume wearers. I'm interested in the real person, not the fictional character," he explains. "That's what makes the work so exciting and sexy. You never know what's coming out. It's mutual seduction, this eroticism, the love relationship is what I appreciate so much."

With a home cinema set-up to die for, Glasner prefers not to wait for the local release or accepting shortened or re-cut international versions: "You can be happy when the Palme d'Or winner comes to Germany at all! There are far more DVDs in England sooner than here."

"I loved 'I Saw the Devil',” Glasner continues. "It's a really disturbing serial killer film. I think the genre is over-milked but this whole revenge thing was driven to a point where it hurt! I bought the uncut version from Amazon but it's no longer available. Splendid Film are trying a Black Edition series, with no rating. I'm waiting to see if they'll be banned! Sooner or later. The problem of German cinema is we don't make films that are banned!"

In his own words, Glasner believes "Germany has become nice and okay. There are no repressed taboos like in Japan. I was there a few times and they are so repressed it's no wonder they break out, storm into love hotels etc.! That's why their cinema is so different. They show things they dream of. Our Western, German, world is that things work well, the economy, culture, subsidies, we're okay. Our subconscious no longer rebels. There are films that have to be made! The subconscious screams to be let out but that's not the case here. The result is one big harmlessness!"

Unlike "Gnade", Glasner's last project, then: "We filmed in the Polar Sea, -40 degrees in eternal snow and ice, eternal darkness, or Terrence Malick light, if you like! It was an absolutely original experience. This is real cinema with big pictures, a touching, intense story with Jürgen Vogel and Birgit Minichmayr, the best actors in Germany, the best shoot of my life!"

Does he have a life outside film? "Not really! Oh yeah! Film music!" Why are we not surprised?
 
Author: Simon Kingsley