TEDDY TODAY: 22nd of februar 2023

Today is a full day with many events we have prepared for you. Feel free to swing by our events “EFM Queer Focus Day”, “Manifestations”, “TEDDY Talk: From Surviving to Thriving!”, “Queer Your Program” and “QUEER Industry Reception”.
If you want to know more about it, you can do so here.

Also, as always, you can find our premieres and reruns listed in this blog post.

PREMIERES:

Crushed

Directed by: Ella Rocca
Switzerland, 2022, 8′
TEDDY nominated

Film still Crushed © Hochschule Luzern BA Video

Doesn’t crush also mean “to smash”? Dealing with their own obsessive crushes, Ella Rocca researches what to do about it. During the quest for a representation of their feelings, texts, images and sounds are layered on top of each other on the computer screen and become the expression of intense contemplation. Internet discoveries and a moment of intimate directness merge to provide a sense of the inner workings of infatuation.

SCREENING TIMES:

22.02. / 16:30 Urania

Learn more about the film in our interview with Ella Rocca.

Viver Mal

Directed by: João Canijo
Portugal, France, 2023, 125′

Film still Viver Mal | Living Bad © Midas Filmes

Five women are running an old hotel and trying to save it from inexorable decay. Guests arrive over the course of a weekend: a couple bears the wounds of a long-term misunderstanding; a domineering mother interferes in her daughter’s relationship; two girls try to save their own love story in the face of opposition from a possessive mother. Viver Mal is the reverse shot of Mal Viver, which is screening in the Competition: here, João Canijo reveals everything that was floating in the depth of field in this film’s mirror image. Reality becomes the intertwining and multiplication of different points of view; the intersection between what can be seen and what the eye misses. Like aplay of light reflections, Viver Mal is Mal Viver in another dimension. The image is distorted, but at the same time seeks a new definition by relaunching itself into infinity.

SCREENING TIMES:

22.02. / 11:45 CinemaxX 7

RERUNS:

20.000 especies de abejas (20,000 Species of Bees)
22.02. / 15:30 Berlinale Palast

Almamula
22.02. / 10:00 Cubix 2

El castillo (The Castle)
22.02. / 21:45 Zoo Palast 3
22.02. / 21:45 Zoo Palast 4
22.02. / 21:45 Zoo Palast 5

O estranho (The Intrusion)
22.02. / 11:00 Kino Arsenal 1

Green Night
22.02. / 19:15 CinemaxX 10

Hello Dankness
22.02. / 16:00 International

Hummingbirds
22.02. / 15:30 Cineplex Titania

I Heard It through the Grapevine
22.02. / 15:00 Delphi Filmpalast

Incroci
22.02. / 09:30 Filmtheater am Friedrichshain

Joan Baez I Am A Noise
22.02. / 19:00 Haus der Berliner Festspiele

Kill Boksoon
22.02. / 21:30 Verti Music Hall

Knochen und Namen (Bones and Names)
22.02. / 16:30 Zoo Palast 3
22.02. / 16:30 Zoo Palast 4
22.02. / 16:30 Zoo Palast 5

Kokomo City
22.02. / 13:00 International

Langer Langer Kuss (Long Long Kiss)
22.02. / 21:30 Filmtheater am Friedrichshain

Llamadas desde Moscú (Calls from Moscow)
22.02. / 19:00 Cubix 7

Love to Love You, Donna Summer
22.02. / 18:30 Verti Music Hall

Marungka tjalatjunu (Dipped in Black)
22.02. / 16:00 Cubix 9

Mutt
22.02. / 12:45 Cubix 8

No Stranger at All
22.02. / 20:00 Werkstattkino@silent green

Le Paradis (The Lost Boys)
22.02. / 18:30 Filmtheater am Friedrichshain

Passages
22.02. / 21:30 Cineplex Titania

Silver Haze
22.02. / 18:00 fsk Kino

Sværddrage (The Shift)
22.02. / 18:45 Cubix 8

Taif kurabu (Typhoon Club)
22.02. / 13:00 Cubix 6

This Is the End
22.02. / 09:30 Cubix 1

Transfariana
22.02. / 21:30 Cubix 2

TEDDY TODAY: 21st of februar 2023

The 37th TEDDY Award ceremony is slowly approaching and it’s getting hectic for us! We are having great fun preparing all the nice events for you.

Today is our TEDDY Talents Talk. You can find out more here.

If you prefer to sit back and relax, you can do that at our premieres or reruns today.

PREMIERES:

20.000 especies de abejas

Directed by: Estibaliz Urresola
Spain, 2023, 125′
TEDDY nominated

Film still 20.000 especies de abejas | 20,000 Species of Bees © Gariza Films, Inicia Films

An eight-year-old is suffering because people keep addressing the child in ways that cause discomfort. They insist on calling the child by the birth name Aitor. And the nickname, Cocó, even if less obviously wrong, does not feel right either. During a summer in the Basque country, the child confides these worries to relatives and friends. But how can a mother handle her child’s quest for identity when she is herself still dealing with her own ambivalent parental legacy? Basque director Estibaliz Urresola Solaguren’s debut feature is a sunny drama. This wonderfully sensitive work is carried by heart-wrenching performances from newcomer Sofía Otero as the little girl in search of a name and Patricia López Arnaiz as her conflicted yet loving mother. But, just as a multitude of bees ensure nature’s diversity, supporting roles are no less essential for the film’s heroine, anda largely female environment shows her some of the diverse ways in which it is possible to be a woman. By adopting more than one point of view, Urresola is respecting the incredible complexity that is gender identity, and touching on one perhaps less obvious aspect of transitioning: your mentality.

SCREENING TIMES:

21.02. / 12:45 Berlinale Palast

Incroci

Directed by: Francesca de Fusco
USA, Italy, 2023, 13′
TEDDY nominated

Film still Incroci © Sofia Camarago Hoyos

Bergamo, northern Italy. Fede’s days are spent between school and a home run by nuns. In a corridor of the Pensionato, Fede sees Valentina, a new tenant, for the first time. In the middle of a choreography of open, semi-open and closed doors, unknown feelings arise. As sudden as the luminosity of a flashlight entering a room at night. As odd as mixing new flavours. Another world is born inside the one Fede knew, with different questions and possibilities. What does it mean to desire?

SCREENING TIMES:

21.02. / 12:30 Zoo Palast 1

Learn more about the film in our interview with Francesca de Fusco.

Kokomo City

Directed by: D. Smith
USA, 2023, 73′
TEDDY nominated

Film still Kokomo City © Couch Potatoe Pictures

Morning routines and conversations in bed, gossip and real talk. In encounters and interviews, D. Smith portrays four Black trans sexworkers in New York and Georgia. The protagonists discuss their lives with relish but without any sugar-coating. The conversations that emerge are deep and passionate reflections on socio-political and social realities as well as perceptive analyses of belonging and identity within the Black community and beyond. Dramatisations and reconstructions, performative interventions and associative collages of biographical set pieces are brought together organically in haunting black-and-white images accompanied by a carefully deployed soundtrack. Dreams and memories, battles fought and crises overcome are openly addressed without skirting topics such as precarityand violence. The protagonists also tell us about their lovers, friends and families, and how these relationships are marked by taboos and fetishisation, but also by their own desires. This vibrant portrait gives them space for their uninhibited and defiant narratives and undermines white, cis-heteronormative assumptions and stigmatisations.

SCREENING TIMES:

21.02. / 19:00 Zoo Palast 2

Learn more about the film in our interview with D. Smith.

Langer Langer Kuss

Directed by: Lukas Röder
Germany, 2023, 40′

Film still Langer Langer Kuss | Long Long Kiss © HFFMünchen

Aaron is determined not to forget his ex-boyfriend Paul. He believes that the only way to preserve the memory of their caresses and kisses is to stop brushing his teeth. To him, all their emotions, all their touching and intimacies are stored in his teeth. His younger sisterand flatmate Lina gently tries to persuade her brother to practice oral hygiene, but she is no longer able to get through to him. When Aaron and Lina’s authoritarian father comes to visit, the situation escalates and Aaron’s behaviour becomes dangerously self-destructive. Lukas Röder, a student of the HFF in Munich, addresses the topic of mental health in his touching chamber piece. Via the actors’ intensely emotional performances and a second layer in which everyone involved reflects on their roles, behavioural patterns and ways of finding help are explored.

SCREENING TIMES:

21.02. / 12:00 Cubix 2

Love to Love You, Donna Summer

Directed by: Roger Ross Williams, Brooklyn Sudano
USA, 2023, 105′

Film still Love to Love You, Donna Summer © Courtesy of Estate of Donna Summer Sudano

Love to Love You, Donna Summer tells the extraordinary story of disco queen Donna Summer through a rich archive of unpublished film excerpts, home video, photographs, artwork, writings, personal audio and other recordings that span the life of one of the most iconic performers ever to shake a room to its timbers. From her early career with Giorgio Moroder in Germany, to later years more focused on spirituality and family life as a shelter from troubles associated with both notoriety and intimate wounds, her story is all the more special for being told in the first person – both singular and plural. Oscar-winning director Roger Ross Williams and Summer’s daughter Brooklyn Sudano’s film has benefitted from Sudano’s privileged perspective, and her access to family members has helped gather a treasure of memories and material. But the intelligence and effect of the duo’s filmmaking approach itself is truly striking. Thanks to the skilful assimilation of audio testimonies into this wealth of images, we are able to discover – or rediscover – how complete an artist Donna Summer was. A key creator of her innovative hit songs, an articulate and funny entertainer and even a talented painter, this emancipated woman invented a lot – herself included.

SCREENING TIMES:

21.02. / 15:00 Haus der Berliner Festspiele

Taif kurabu

Directed by: Shinji Smai
Japan, 1985, 115′

Film still Taifū kurabu | Typhoon Club © Directors Company

This school-age tragedy is set in a secondary school in Tokyo over five days during which a typhoon grows, rages, and abates. After class clown Akira is caught watching his fellow students partying at the school’s indoor pool, he is deemed a peeping tom and held underwater so long he almost drowns. Meanwhile, the teacher who has been summoned has his own problems: the mother and uncle of a fellow teacher with whom he is having an affair are trying to force him to marry her, so he doesn’t have much attention to spare for the woes of his pupils. The children talk about life, death, and reincarnation; about a lesbian couple among them, and about the typhoon. As the storm draws closer, a sense of aggression swells among the schoolchildren … The storm of emotions in Typhoon Club is unleashed with the insistence of a force of nature. In an escalating rondel of episodes, including a brawl and an attempted rape, the film depicts a“spring awakening” with feelings erupting like hot lava flows. It captures the self-sufficient world of youth poised between exuberance and depression, while the camera keeps a respectful distance.

SCREENING TIMES:

21.02. /21.02. / 19:00 Cubix 3

RERUNS:

After
21.02. / 21:30 Cubix 2

Almamula
21.02. / 15:30 Cineplex Titania

El castillo (The Castle)
21.02. / 10:00 Cubix 9

Femme
21.02. / 21:30 Cineplex Titania

Hummingbirds
21.02. / 20:00 Urania

It’s a Date
21.02. / 21:30 Cubix 9

Knochen und Namen (Bones and Names)
21.02. / 10:00 Cubix 6

Langer Langer Kuss (Long Long Kiss)
21.02. / 19:00 International

Mangosteen
21.02. / 14:00 Werkstattkino@silent green

Manodrome
21.02. / 15:45 Verti Music Hall

Mutt
21.02. / 15:30 Filmtheater am Friedrichshain

Nuits blanches (Sleepless Nights)
21.02. / 21:30 Cubix 9

Passages
21.02. / 12:30 Cubix 9

A Rainha Diaba (The Devil Queen)
21.02. / 17:00 Werkstattkino@silent green

Silver Haze
21.02. / 16:00 Cubix 5

Sisi & Ich (Sisi & I)
21.02. / 18:00 Cubix 9

Sværddrage (The Shift)
21.02. / 10:00 Cineplex Titania

This Is the End
21.02. / 16:00 Cubix 7

To Write From Memory
21.02. / 09:45 Zoo Palast 2

Transfariana
21.02. / 21:15 Akademie der Künste

TEDDY TODAY: 20th of februar 2023

It’s already half time at the Berlinale and the time flew by. Nevertheless, we still have some films that celebrate their premiere today.

If you can’t find anything for you at the premieres, our reruns are listed below again.

We also have a few events planned for today. We have two of our Directors Exchange’s with the topics “Time after time, club culture and the concept of time in Queer Cinema” and “Journeys of rebellion and truth, Trans* narratives as tools of unapologetic self-representation.” If that’s not enough for you, our TEDDY Talk: QueerWeb Part 1 will also take place today.
More about the events can be found here.

PREMIERES:

Bad Behaviour

Directed by: Corrie Chen
Australia, 2023, 115′

Film still Bad Behaviour © Sarah Enticknap

One day their paths cross again, by chance. Alice, now an internationally acclaimed cellist, has a series of performances at the concert hall where Jo works. A decade has passed since their year spent as scholarship students at an exclusive girls’ boarding school deep in the Australian outback, where the focus was on developing one’s personality, independence, strength and resilience, as well as forming a bond with nature and a sense of community among the pupils. The dormitories were in remote wooden huts and the girls were largely left to their own devices in their spare time. Although Jo quickly bonded with the shy Alice, not wanting to remain an outsider, she gravitated towards the girls higher up in the pecking order under the sway of the dominant Portia – at least that is how Jo remembers it. But Alice confronts her with a completely different version of events. Based on Rebecca Starford’s eponymous memoir, writers Pip Karmel and Magda Wozniak and director Corrie Chen tell a gripping and unsparing story of how the desire to belong can set in motion a dynamic that is as cruel as it is crucial.

SCREENING TIMES:

20.02. / 16:00 Zoo Palast 2

Hummingbirds

Directed by: Silvia Del Carmen Castaños, Estefanía “Beba” Contreras
USA, 2023, 77′

Film still Hummingbirds © I Love You Chingos LLC

“I want to remember this time, last time, and next time. I want to remember it all with no parts missing, because I appreciate even the bad times.”

In Laredo, a city in southern Texas on the Mexican border, best friends Silvia and Beba know that the long summer nights of theirteen age years cannot last forever. Their hang-out spots are so familiar but, stuck in an immigration process over which deportation hangs as a constant possibility, home still seems a fragile concept. Between bars, drive-thrus, friends’ couches and the border wastelands, they confront the stresses of survival, the future, and community building. For them, this means protest action for legal abortion and against border control abuses, in a politically divided America. But the dusty half-light is also a time for poetry and dreams. Their laughter and creative expression cement a sense of solidarity and belonging in togetherness.

SCREENING TIMES:

20.02. / 16:00 Cubix 2

Llamadas desde Moscú

Directed by: Luís Alejandro Yero
Cuba, Germany, Norway, 2023, 65′
TEDDY nominated

Film still Llamadas desde Moscú | Calls from Moscow © María Grazia Goya

The apartment is so high up that the noise of the city below barely penetrates, the sound of the traffic and the passing trains merges with the wind and the ventilation system, a constant background hum. It only recedes when the four young Cubans speak, although they’re never seen together, they just talk to their phones and their phones respond, conversations with loved ones, sales consultations, adviceservices for immigrants, chats with the director, news reports, lip-synced pop renditions, calls not always picked up. They can be as fabulous as they want in the apartment, but the lift that brings them down to the Moscow streets is already a different space, where you stare out in front of you and avoid attracting attention; Russia and Cuba are so very far apart. It’s hard not to feel melancholy when faced with an emptied-out city and endless snow, and this winter is unlike all the others, not just darkness, but war and disease, signs of the times. But hope is still there, waiting at the other end of the line, with calm, with patience, home is many things at once, what else can it be right now? It’s small comfort, but there’s no comfort too small: everything little by little.

SCREENING TIMES:

20.02. / 13:30 Cubix 1

Learn more about the film in our interview with Luís Alejandro Yero.

Mangosteen

Directed by: Tulapop Saenjaroen
Thailand, 2022, 40′

Film still Mangosteen © Tulapop Saenjaroen

Mangosteen tells the story of Earth, a young man who returns to his hometown, Rayong, where his sister, Ink, runs a fruit processing factory. During a casual meeting, Earth finds out that his definition of the term “future” is drastically different from his sister’s. The more he tries to involve himself in the fruit juice business, the less he feels needed there. Earth eventually decides to distance himself from the family operation and resumes his old hobby, writing a violent, psychic, irrational, abstract, gory, and unrealistic novel. Switching narrative directions as well as languages, Mangosteen weaves a meandering path through factory floors and orchards. The film was shot on outdated Digital8 video cameras and follows no clear narrative logic. It is a film as much about storytelling as it is about its protagonist’s erratic and surprising idiosyncrasies.

SCREENING TIMES:

20.02. / 19:00 Kino Arsenal 1

No Stranger at All

Directed by: Priya Sen
India, 2022, 40′

Film still No Stranger at All © Priya Sen

“For two years starting in 2020, this work has been forming along the edges of disquiet and premonition, in fragments and intensities, through wandering and not-staying. It has tried to find language for and ways across the bizarre upheavals of social and political values with the rise of fascism in India and a global pandemic. It has insisted on being amongst the things that keep from falling apart. Filmed in Delhi, these incomplete fictions are of the people, places, and protests that keep the language of hatred at bay and absorb the city’s griefand euphoria. In them are the continuous echoes of a violent and tenuous present. The false closures and tenuous associations in this video/essay compose a timeline of the city at an angle through the time of this work. There is a shadowy sense of a protagonist who un-dreams it all; a stranger, who it turns out, is no stranger at all.” Priya Sen

SCREENING TIMES:

20.02. / 13:30 Kino Arsenal 1

Sværddrage

Directed by: Amalie Maria Nielsen
Denmark, 2023, 19′
TEDDY nominated

Film still Sværddrage | The Shift © Lina Elvekjær Biehl

In a home for struggling girls, young Milo is secretly transitioning gender. Only care worker Nicki is aware of it and supports them. Whenever Milo feels angry, or like running away or just wants a change of scenery, it’s Nicki who brings a feeling of security and home. One day, through the thin walls of the institution, Milo hears something they wish they hadn’t. As hugs cannot solve every conflict, they push the emergency button.

SCREENING TIMES:

20.02. / 09:30 Zoo Palast 1

Learn more about the film in our interview with Amalie Maria Nielsen.

To Write From Memory

Directed by: Emory Chao Johnson
USA, 2023, 19′
TEDDY nominated

Film still To Write from Memory © Farrah Su

Meticulously, they inspect their own body as the camera looks on, documenting every step of their transition. Yet what starts off as a young filmmaker’s audiovisual diary soon expands into a confrontation with their own past. It is not easy to break out of a cocoon spun from motherly demands and grievances – especially when your body gets treated as a family matter, and when your need for autonomy is met with incomprehension.

SCREENING TIMES:

20.02. / 15:30 Zoo Palast 1

Learn more about the film in our interview with Emory Chao Johnson.

RERUNS:

All the Colours of the World Are Between Black and White
20.02. / 21:45 Zoo Palast 3
20.02. / 21:45 Zoo Palast 4
20.02. / 21:45 Zoo Palast 5

Almamula
20.02. / 18:30 Filmtheater am Friedrichshain

Arturo a los 30
20.02. / 21:30 Kino Arsenal 1

La Bête dans la jungle (The Beast in the Jungle)
20.02. / 19:00 Cubix 2

El castillo (The Castle)
20.02. / 13:00 International

Desperté con un sueño (I Woke Up With a Dream)
20.02. / 10:00 Cineplex Titania

O estranho (The Intrusion)
20.02. / 18:00 Delphi Filmpalast

Exhibition
20.02. / 20:00 Werkstattkino@silent green

Femme
20.02. / 12:30 Cubix 9

Manodrome
20.02. / 10:00 Haus der Berliner Festspiele

Motståndaren (Opponent)
20.02. / 10:00 Cubix 5

Mutt
20.02. / 20:00 Urania

Le Paradis (The Lost Boys)
20.02. / 12:45 Cubix 8

Passages
20.02. / 21:30 Zoo Palast 1

Silver Haze
20.02. / 22:00 Cubix 7

Sisi & Ich (Sisi & I)
20.02. / 09:30 Verti Music Hall

Sværddrage (The Shift)
20.02. / 10:00 Cubix 2

Transfariana
20.02. / 18:00 Cineplex Titania

Între revoluii (Between Revolutions)
20.02. / 11:00 Kino Arsenal 1

TEDDY TODAY: 19th of februar 2023

Today we have especially many premieres to introduce to you.

At the bottom you will find, as always, the times for revivals.

PREMIERES:

El castillo

Directed by: Martín Benchimol
Argentina, France, 2023, 78′

Film still El castillo | The Castle © Gema Films

Justina and her daughter Alexia are trying to maintain the huge house that the former housekeeper has inherited from her boss. But the two Indigenous women do not have the means to pay for the upkeep of the decaying property. The money they get from selling the house’s contents online and its cattle is just a drop in the ocean. Moreover, the former owner’s family visits regularly and insists on continuing to treat Justina and Alexia like servants. Alexia refuses to accept this role any longer; she intends to return to the city to work as a car mechanic and start conquering the world as a racing driver. The film’s mixture of documentary-style footage and dramatised scenes tinged with horror turns the house into an enchanted castle that refuses to let go of its inhabitants. The patchy mobile phone reception becomes a metaphor for the pair’s marginalisation as they struggle with their circumstances. The insurmountable class barriers that exist in Argentina serve to hold Justina captive in her social class, even after she herself becomes a house and land owner. A dark fairy tale.

SCREENING TIMES:

19.02. / 16:00 Zoo Palast 2

O estranho

Directed by: Flora Dias, Juruna Mallon
Brazil, France, 2023, 105′
TEDDY nominated

Film still O estranho | The Intrusion

O estranho, the intrusion, is a place: Guarulhos International Airport near São Paulo. From there, the journey proceeds not so much through the world as through time. Built on Indigenous territory, the airport completely changed the landscape. Some people left, others remained: they now work in the duty-free shop or in baggage handling.T he past reappears in various forms, challenging the protagonists, including Alê. Right there, in the riverbed where she used to play with her sister, she now works all day long. Just as the concrete covers the vegetation, which covered the graves in turn, the stories pile up, layer upon layer. They offer food forthought about what remains. The film moves between fiction and reality, carrying out a minimal form of archaeology. Its rhythm uncoversthe images of a vibrant place. O estranho is the second joint project by Flora Dias and Juruna Mallon and shows their interest in landscapes, in people and in theinterplay of the two. And in keeping memories alive.

SCREENING TIMES:

19.02. / 17:00 Cubix 1

Learn more about the film in our interview with Flora Dias and Juruna Mallon.

Exhibition

Directed by: Mary Helena Clark
USA, 2022, 19′
TEDDY nominated

Film still Exhibition © Mary Helena Clark

A collection of images reproduced from films, museums, and archives, Exhibition weaves together multiple biographies and texts to construct a single imaginary subject. Eija-Riitta Eklöf-Berliner-Mauer marries the Berlin Wall and turns her home into a museum of architectural miniatures to abate her longing for those objects. Mary Richardson stabs Diego Velázquez’s “The Toilet of Venus” as an act of protest and dedication to an imprisoned suffragette. Shifting into first person point-of-view, the narration combines quotations from the painter Agnes Martin, early eye tracking studies, Sigmund Freud’s case history of “Rat Man,” and an account of a Klein bottle’s misuseas a candlestick holder. The film fragments, copies, and excerpts to create a portrait of desire and trespass, becoming a meditation on the assertion and refusal of subjecthood. “I’m not a woman. I’m a doorknob.”

SCREENING TIMES:

19.02. / 20:30 Kino Arsenal 1

Learn more about the film in our interview with Mary Helena Clark.

Hello Dankness

Directed by: Soda Jerk
Australia, 2022, 70′

Film still Hello Dankness © Soda Jerk

The phenomenon that the context in which images are seen determines both the way in which they are perceived and their effect is impressively demonstrated by the artistic duo Soda Jerk in their latest work Hello Dankness. By assembling scenes from various films in new contexts, partially manipulating them and combining them with new soundtracks, Soda Jerk create an unexpected narrative about the profound changes in US society since Trump’s presidency. Images from the media in recent years – from the 2016 US elections, the pandemic and the #MeToo debate – are cleverly integrated into scenes from films such as American Beauty and Wayne’s World. As a result of this playful combination with borrowings from pop culture, the film constantly develops new and absurd twists. Using only found footage, Soda Jerk have created a refreshingly anarchistic and multi-layered work that explores topics such as fake news, deepfakes and conspiracy narratives but also the politics of images: how they spread, whom they serve or harm and how they are permanently subject to reinterpretation.

SCREENING TIMES:

19.02. / 20:319.02. / 20:30 Cubix 2

I Heard It through the Grapevine

Directed by: Dick Fontaine
USA, 1982, 91′

Film still I Heard It through the Grapevine © Dick Fontaine, courtesy of the Dick Fontaine Collection, Harvard Film Archive

Two decades after the Civil Rights Movement, James Baldwin revisits historical places stretching from the South to the North – from Selma and Birmingham, Alabama to Atlanta, Georgia and on to the battleground beaches of St. Augustine, Florida and the Dr MartinLuther King Memorial in Washington, D. C. On this journey down memory lane, he engages in conversations with friends, activists and fellow writers such as Amiri Baraka, Oretha Castle Haley and Chinua Achebe, reflecting on the past events that sparked the fight against racial segregation, the attacks on churches, racist police brutality and the arbitrary injustices which the Black population had to endure. Questioning their own legacy, these luminaries look at the present and how little has actually been achieved in the wake of the movement, and we, the audience are equally encouraged to reflect on our own era. Dick Fontaine skilfully weaves archival materials into the accounts, making his film at once a poignant historical document and highly relevant today in the context of the Black Lives Matter movement.

SCREENING TIMES:

19.02. / 17:30 Kino Arsenal 1

It’s a Date

Directed by: Nadia Parfan
Ukraine, 2023, 5′
TEDDY nominated

Film still It’s a Date © Phalanstery Films, Radar Films, 2023

Kyiv in 2022. A car races at breakneck speed through the city at dawn. Filmed from a subjective camera angle in a single unedited shot, this contemporary remake of Claude Lelouch’s film C’etait un rendez-vous captures the emotions in a state of emergency caused by the war.

SCREENING TIMES:

19.02. / 15:30 Cubix 2

Learn more about the film in our interview with Nadia Parfan.

Knochen und Namen

Directed by: Fabian Stumm
Germany, 2023, 104′
TEDDY nominated

Film still Knochen und Namen | Bones and Names © Postofilm

“Don’t ask me how I feel about something if you don’t want to hear it!” “I do want to hear it, but sometimes it’s just not true.” Actor Boris and writer Jonathan are a couple. But their relationship has reached a point where they might as well spend their evenings together separately: one lies in bed reading scripts, while the other works at a desk in the next room. Immersing himself deeper and deeper into rehearsals for a new film with an ambitious director, Boris begins to confuse real and fictional characters; meanwhile, Jonathan tries to redefine his voice as a writer. During these days spent struggling with emotional distance and closeness, trust, desire and fear of loss, Boris’s little niece Josie flits about like Shakespeare’s Puck, testing her boundaries. Knochen und Namen is actor Fabian Stumm’s directorial and screenplay feature-length debut. Unfolding in humorous and tender sequences that take place in demarcated, characteristic settings (bedroom, supermarket and rehearsal room), his film is an intelligent and entertaining reflection on relationships.

SCREENING TIMES:

19.02. / 12:00 Cubix 2

Learn more about the film in our interview with Fabian Stumm.

Marungka tjalatjunu

Directed by: Matthew Thorne, Derik Lynch
Australia, 2022, 25′
TEDDY nominated

Film still Marungka tjalatjunu | Dipped in Black © Other Pictures

Marungka tjalatjunu (Dipped in Black) follows Yankunytjatjara man Derik Lynch’s road trip back to Country for spiritual healing, as memories from his childhood return. A journey from the oppression of white city life in Adelaide, back home to his remote Anangu Community (Aputula) to perform on sacred Inma ground. Inma is a traditional form of storytelling using the visual, verbal and physical. It is how Anangu Tjukurpa (story connected to country / dreaming / myth / lore) have been passed down for over 60,000 years from generation to generation.

SCREENING TIMES:

19.02. / 17:00 Cubix 2

Nuits blanches

Directed by: Donatienne Berthereau
France, 2023, 25′
TEDDY nominated

Film still Nuits blanches | Sleepless Nights | Schlaflose Nächte © Les Films du Sursaut

April 2022 in France. The presidential election is entering its final round and the atmosphere is tense. Solène, a waitress, drifts throughthe night. She takes drugs, hurts people’s feelings and increasingly loses her grip.

SCREENING TIMES:

19.02. / 15:30 Cubix 2

Learn more about the film in our interview with Donatienne Berthereau.

Le Paradis

Directed by: Zeno Graton
Belgium, France, 2023, 83′
TEDDY nominated

Film still Le Paradis | The Lost Boys © Tarantula, Silex Films, Menuetto Film

“In the middle of the lake we’d sometimes see fish trapped in the ice lined up beside one another. I thought they spent the winter there, then woke up in the spring. I thought they came back to life and breathed again, like before.”

In a youth correctional facility, Joe is preparing for his return to society, uncertain as to what life will look like on the other side of the barbed-wire fence. But when new arrival William moves into the cell next door, Joe’s desire for freedom quickly gives way to a desire of another kind. Through camera obscura photography, ink drawing, dance and rap, Joe and William embark on a twin journey of emotional and expressive emancipation, revolving around each other with increasing yearning and despair. This debut feature charts the twists and turns of a passion between two young men who thought their lives had been put on hold and offers an uncompromising vision of love: behind these walls, passion comes first, and liberty only a distant second.

SCREENING TIMES:

19.02. / 20:00 Urania

Learn more about the film in our interview with Zeno Graton.

Passages

Directed by: Ira Sachs
France, 2023, 91′
TEDDY nominated

Film still Passages © SBS Poductions

On the final day of his shoot in Paris, German filmmaker Tomas is visibly tense. He is all stern exactitude as he explains to his extras just precisely how to position their hands or what their motivation is as they walk down a flight of stairs – right up until the final slate. At the wrap party, Tomas falls first into the arms of his British husband Martin, but then he meets a young primary school teacher, Agathe. Adance develops into a flirtation and then into a passionate night together. The next morning, Tomas proudly tells Martin that he has slept with a woman. As this one-night stand grows into something more, the relationship between the two men begins to change. A tale of relationships that is marked by passion, jealousy and narcissism unfolds in which each shows scant sensitivity for the needs of the others. Ira Sachs’ latest work, his sixth outing in Panorama, once again proves his talent for carefully observed relationship dramas. There is a hint of French cinema and a tang of Fassbinder wafting around the three protagonists as their personal wounds constantly redefine the power relations between them.

SCREENING TIMES:

19.02. / 19:15 CinemaxX 10

Learn more about the film in our interview with Ira Sachs.

Silver Haze

Directed by: Sacha Polak
Netherlands, United Kingdom, 2023, 103′
TEDDY nominated

Film still Silver Haze © Viking Film

When 23-year-old Franky hears the words “I love you” from her boyfriend after sex, her response is merely: “Whatever, I’ll see you later.” As a child, she was seriously injured by a fire and this has left its mark on more than just her body. For 15 years, she has been trying to bring those responsible to justice. Franky is now working as a nurse in the very hospital where, back then, her life was saved. She is a welcome sight in every room and finds the right words for every patient, including the impetuous Florence. The two fall in love, and Franky runs away from her domineering family in London’s working-class Dagenham to find instead a safe haven with Florence and her patchwork family. But the past will not let her rest, and it is not long before cracks begin to appear in her relationship with Florence. Silver Haze is the second collaboration between director Sacha Polak and non-professional actor Vicky Knight. The story is based on improvisations and recollections of true events from Vicky Knight’s life. The sensual camera captures images that are immediate and raw but also gently poetic.

SCREENING TIMES:

19.02. / 16:00 International

Learn more about the film in our interview with Sacha Polak.

Sisi & Ich

Directed by: Frauke Finsterwalder
Germany, Switzerland, Austria, 2023, 132′

Film still Sisi & Ich | Sisi & I © Bernd Spauke

Irma Countess von Sztáray does not have it easy. Shortly before her application to become lady-in-waiting to Empress Elisabeth of Austria and Queen of Hungary known as “Sisi”, Irma gets a bloody nose from her strict mother in all the excitement. Then, at court, she is put on display like a prize cow and interrogated. At Sisi’s summer residence on Corfu, Irma first has to prove her athleticism in sadistic exercises and is then put on a diet of cocaine extracts before she finally meets the moody and erratic empress in person. In between laxative teas and watery soups, hikes and beauty treatments, the two very different women quickly become close – though only as close as Sisi will allow, naturally. But every summer has an end, and when they return to Vienna, the lives of Sisi and Irma change drastically. In her wild reinterpretation of the oft-told “Sisi” myth, Frauke Finsterwalder unleashes two acting forces of nature – Susanne Wolff and Sandra Hüller – on each other and allows them to upstage each other. With stunning costumes by Tanja Hausner and set to a soundtrack by Nico, Portishead and Le Tigre, the film transports us to a world dominated by women to which, apart from the queer maids, only the gay Archduke Viktor has access.

SCREENING TIMES:

19.02. / 09:00 CinemaxX 7

This Is the End

Directed by: Vincent Dieutre
France, 2023, 108′
TEDDY nominated

Film still This Is the End © La Huit 2022

During the pandemic, the European filmmaker travels to Los Angeles, which is no stranger to spectacle and disaster. Under the Hollywood sign, being constantly in motion is de rigueur: never stop, never look too closely, never develop a feeling of being here. Long tracking shots from the safety of the Ford Mustang take in the city, whose shimmering surfaces reflect back to the filmmaker his own perspective, shaped by cultural criticism. The voids diagnosed by Baudrillard and Bégout, the missing connections, the meaninglessness, the end of the world which has perhaps already occurred, look surprisingly exciting through the tired eyes of the Old World: a 40-year-old love story is rekindled, love’s movements fall out of the cool flow of time, coyotes conquer the gardens, snakes swim in the pools. A chorus of actors share doomsday poems by E. E. Cummings, Ocean Vuong, Claudia Rankine and more with each other; these voices from the New World interrupt the French commentary. And two 70-plus bodies from two extinct worlds synchronise tenderly with the cinema of attractions.

SCREENING TIMES:

19.02. / 18:00 Delphi Filmpalast

Learn more about the film in our interview with Vincent Dieutre.

Transfariana

Directed by: Joris Lachaise
France, Colombia, 2023, 153′
TEDDY nominated

Film still Transfariana © Mujō and Romeo

In a Colombian prison in 2012, the left-wing intellectual FARC rebel Jaison and the hitherto apolitical trans former sex worker Laura fall inlove. Their bond initially causes distrust within the FARC, but the charismatic Jaison is able to dispel such misgivings by calling for acommon class struggle, and evoking a sense of solidarity that draws on the shared experience of discrimination. This utopia of a just world sees trans activists stand together with disarmed FARC fighters at demos in Bogotá’s red-light district and in FARC camps in the mountains. Thus, the Trans FARC begins to fight together for a society where trans rights are part of the peace treaty and where shared parenthood is possible for trans sex workers such as Daniela and Max. The FARC has been portrayed many times in documentaries in recent years, but director Joris Lachaise comprehensively depicts an entirely new aspect. His film organically interweaves different periods and footage shot by the protagonists themselves in various prisons. The title of the film, Transfariana, refers to the female FARC members, the “Farianas”.

SCREENING TIMES:

19.02. / 15:00 Cubix 9

Learn more about the film in our interview with Joris Lachaise.

RERUNS:

After
19.02. / 16:00 Cubix 5

All the Colours of the World Are Between Black and White
19.02. / 13:00 Cubix 5

Almamula
19.02. / 18:45 Cubix 8

La Bête dans la jungle (The Beast in the Jungle)
19.02. / 10:00 Cubix 7

Desperté con un sueño (I Woke Up With a Dream)
19.02. / 09:30 Filmtheater am Friedrichshain

Drifter
19.02. / 19:00 Cubix 5

Es gibt keine Angst (Afraid Doesn’t Exist)
19.02. / 11:00 Kino Arsenal 1

Femme
19.02. / 21:30 Zoo Palast 1

Joan Baez I Am A Noise
19.02. / 14:00 Thalia – Das Programmkino (Potsdam)

Kill Boksoon
19.02. / 09:30 Cubix 9

Knochen und Namen (Bones and Names)
19.02. / 19:00 International

Mammalia
19.02. / 10:30 Zoo Palast 5

Manodrome
19.02. / 12:15 Verti Music Hall

Motståndaren (Opponent)
19.02. / 18:30 Cineplex Titania

Orlando, ma biographie politique (Orlando, My Political Biography)
19.02. / 10:30 International
19.02. / 13:30 Zoo Palast 3
19.02. / 13:30 Zoo Palast 4
19.02. / 13:30 Zoo Palast 5
19.02. / 22:00 Cubix 5

Perpetrator
19.02. / 21:30 Cineplex Titania

A Rainha Diaba (The Devil Queen)
19.02. / 10:00 Akademie der Künste

Sisi & Ich (Sisi & I)
19.02. / 18:00 Zoo Palast 1

TEDDY AFTER PARTY – MEET THE DJs

We’re excited to have four fantastic DJs on board who will provide the best sound for the big TEDDY Party at Berlin’s Volksbühne. 

Pat Bernetti started her career in NYC and now resides in Berlin, playing in clubs, festivals, awards, galas and events all over the world, where she thrills the party crowds with her mix of RnB, Hip Hop, House, Pop, Funk, Oldies, Rock, Electro Swing & Charts. 

DJ Trust.The.Girl is electrifying queer crowds all over Germany with her colorful, vibrant mix of diverse genres.  

Amperia is a queer, non binary Berlin-based DJ. Known for their party Golosissima and as resident and curator of Autopoiesis and poly|motion, they will be playing a driving techno house set. 

Ābnamā: a can of worms wearing lipstick on the can, a return to the source of all things considered and a flashback to bearings lost but never had. Based in Berlin, co-organizer and resident at DUMP, she is known for driving grooves that span across various genres.