Wednesday Feb. 13, 2019
Location: Berliner Freiheit, Berliner Freiheit 2 , 10785 Berlin

The Queer Academy is an annual convention of international filmmakers and festival organizers in the gay-lesbian-transgender context (2018 figures: 205 persons/institutions) at the Berlinale. The QUEER ACADEMY aims to establish itself as an institute of queer cultural memory. The ACADEMY will become an archive of queer culture and history that binds together queer cultural productions and cooperates with other organizations. Since memories are essential for the identity construction, the QUEER ACADEMY will offer an opportunity for queer people to form and find their identity in queer memory.

More than 1000 films with queer context from all continents have been presented at the Berlinale since the foundation of the TEDDY AWARD. The TEDDY AWARD has built an archive where all the movies ever shown in its programme are collected together with supplementary information. It is necessary to save this archive – the world’s largest of its kind. And for this reason, it is essential to digitalize it, to arrange a database and make this archive available for sharing, as well as to expand the bank of supplementary materials with the support of the members of the ACADEMY and the common users. The QUEER ACADEMY acts as a center of queer cultural memory, where artifacts and representations should be stored and become open to the public. The concentration of this queer film historical memory goes far beyond the cinematographic context and reflects the global memory of queer liberation movements of all the participating countries.

The digitalisation of these materials does not only mean that they are available for research and for work on (film)history. By digitalisation we can save these materials from disappearance, as they are permanently marginalized by their endangered existence in most of the countries. For the first time, the writing history of the queer population becomes possible and Berlin is now a centre of this national and international process. It is important to utilize the memories stored in the QUEER ACADEMY and therefore keep them alive. Only through active work with the memories we do not let them freeze, be forgotten or be limited to specific aspects.

TIMETABLE Wednesday Feb. 13, 2019
Location: Berliner Freiheit, Berliner Freiheit 2 , 10785 Berlin (FREE ENTRANCE)

11.00 am Opening: Wieland Speck
11.30 am Panel 1: Programmers of Colour in Focus:
Then, Now and the Future
1.00 pm Lunch break
1.30 pm Toby Ashraf in Conversation with Isaac Julien
2.30 pm Break
3.00 pm Panel 2: 40 Years of Queer Programming
4.30 pm Break
5.30 pm Invitation Only: Queer Connection Meeting/
International Queer Film Project Exchange
Location: Martin Gropius Bau, Kino
6.30 pm Invitation Only: Queer Industry Reception / Get Together
Location: Martin Gropius Bau, Lichthof

PANEL 1:
PROGRAMMERS OF COLOUR IN FOCUS: THEN, NOW AND THE FUTURE

Host: Hebe Tabachnik, Palm Springs Film Festival/Seattle International Film Festival/Dance Camera West/Guadalajara International Film Festival in Los Angeles
Hussain Currimbhoy, Sundance Film Festival
F. Clementine Dramani-Issifou, Semaine de la Critique/Festival of New Documentary Cinemas/BeninDocs
Dr. Farzada Farkhooi, Trans*Formation Film Fest Berlin
Pecha Lo, Women Make Waves International Film Festival
Kevin Mwachiro, Out Film Festival
Paul Struthers, San Francisco International LGBTQ+ Film Festival

CHRISTIAN “KIKI” PETERSEN
IN CONVERSATION WITH ISAAC JULIEN

PANEL 2:
40 YEARS OF QUEER PROGRAMMING

Host: Wieland Speck, TEDDY steering committee/Berlinale Panorama Curator 1992-2017
John Greyson, director/TEDDY AWARD winner 1989 and 1991
Sandra Hezinová, Mezipatra Queer Film Festival/Karlovy Vary International Film Festival
Isaac Julien, director/TEDDY AWARD winner 1989/Special TEDDY AWARD winner 2008
Andrea Kuhn, Nuremberg International Human Rights Film Festival
Kevin Mwachiro, Out Film Festival
Greta Schiller, director/TEDDY AWARD winner 1989 and 1999