Angelina Maccarone started out as a writer for song lyrics before she got her MA in literature. In 1994 she wrote and co-directed her first feature. In her work as a filmmaker she explored various genres: comedy, thriller and drama. Her films were shown in film festivals all over the world, winning her numerous awards, like the Golden Leopard at Locarno Film Festival. Her first documentary THE LOOK—about and with actress Charlotte Rampling—was part of the official selection at the Cannes Film Festival in 2011. In 2014 she initiated an internet campaign against homophobia: TOLERANT? THAT'S US! Angelina Maccarone is based in Berlin, where she works on a new feature which will be shot in Tanger, Brussels and London. Since 2014 she is full professor for film directing at Film University Babelsberg. All art is (and must be) radically subjective. The artist perceives the world from his/her singular position and—reciprocally—also has an impact on it. The connection between artist and world is in constant motion. The world today is never the same as yesterday or tomorrow. The artist undergoes changes of physical, psychological, intellectual, emotional and spiritual nature, and yet throughout the turbulences of life there is a core that makes him/her unique, like a fingerprint. How can film art—as it is a collaboration of several artists—be subjective? Film works with emotional identification. The character has to be a credible and distinctive human being: a subject. This is the most important task of the director: to lend his/her subjectivity to the plot and the characters to bring the narration to life. All of this is of course true for me as a writer/director as well. I became who I am by what I experienced in my world. By being the daughter of an Italian migrant worker, born in Germany only 20 years after World War II, by being a lesbian, before there were lesbian characters I could watch without shame, by becoming a woman director, when only a small percentage of films were made by women. And who I am has an impact on my individual point of view, my "subjectivity," which makes me choose certain subjects and lets me strive to turn characters into human subjects that an audience can relate to, without necessarily having to be part of the same so called minority.   The James K. Binder Lectureship in Literature is made possible by Mr. Binder's generous bequest and honors his wishes that we bring leading European intellectuals to UC San Diego to provide a forum for rigorous discussions of literary topics.