Sex and porn centre stage of Berlin festival

Sex and the pornography industry take centre stage at next week's Berlin Film Festival after the leading actress in last year's Golden Bear winning film was publicly hounded over her earlier work as a German porn actress.

Berlinale director Dieter Kosslick said the focus on sex and porn was less a nod to the controversy that engulfed Head-On, starring Sibel Kekilli, than a tribute to sex research pioneer Alfred Kinsey, as well as the commercial success of porn films.

"There are simply a lot of films about sex and pornography out there in the market," said Kosslick, whose event is often ranked behind Cannes and alongside Venice as one of the world's leading festivals.

"We thought it was time to take a look at the era we lived through 30 years ago," he added. "It was a time of sexual repression and yet a lot of money was earned with sex films."

Kekilli hid her past making porn films and came under scrutiny by tabloids over her hard-core background. But the German public didn't care; it cheered her performance in Head-On. She regularly berated tabloids in award speeches.

The competition entry Kinsey features Liam Neeson as the sex researcher who created a storm in the late 1940s with his groundbreaking study Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male.