Tag Archives: Berlinale

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TEDDY TODAY: Monday the 24th of February 2020

Here we are again, on the fifth day of the 70th Berlinale. Today we are welcoming 9 more films ready to be screened! Check them all out below:

Scroll down to the bottom of the page to find the list of films that will be re-screened today, the 24th of February.

SHIRLEY
CinemaxX 7 – 12:00

Directed by: Josephine Decker
Short Description: Two imposing personalities are at the centre of this intensely atmospheric drama: horror writer Shirley Jackson and her husband Stanley Hyman, a literary critic and college professor. When young graduate student Fred Nemser and his pregnant wife Rose move in with the Hymans in the autumn of 1964, they soon find themselves under the magnetic spell of their brilliant and proudly unconventional hosts.

PLAYBACK. ENSAYO DE UNA DESPEDIDA
CinemaxX 3 – 16:30

Playback. Ensayo de una despedida © Agustina Comedi

Directed by: Agustina Comedi
Short Description: Argentina in the late 1980s: Catholic, conservative and shaped by a military dictatorship. “La Delpi”, the sole survivor of a group of transgender women and drag queens, talks about how their shows in basement theatres galvanised the community and helped them in their struggle against AIDS and police violence. How they healed their wounds with lipstick, playback performances and improvised
stage outfits.

DISPATCHES FROM ELSEWHERE
Zoo Palast 2 – 17:00

Jason Segel as Peter, Eve Lindley as Simone – Dispatches from Elsewhere _ Season 1, Episode 2 – Photo Credit: Zach Dilgard/AMC

Directed by: Jason Segel (Ep. 1) and Wendey Stanzler (Ep. 2)
Short Description: A chain of strange coincidences leads computer scientist Peter to the mysterious Jejune Institute. Its charismatic director Octavio promises Peter a way out of the invisibility and quiet desperation of his everyday life, offering him instead the gateway to a life full of magic, beauty and “divine nonchalance”. Peter plays along. But is this really a game? Is it an alternative reality? Or a conspiracy making a bid for social control? Together with Simone, Janice and Fredwynn, Peter tries to decipher the signs and symbols and to get to the bottom of the institute’s secrets.

SCHWESTERLEIN
Berlinale Palast – 18:15

Directed by: Véronique Reymond
Short Description: Lisa has given up her ambitions as a playwright in Berlin and moved to Switzerland with her children and husband, who runs an international school there. When her twin brother Sven, a star actor at Berlin’s Schaubühne theatre, falls ill with leukaemia, Lisa returns to the German capital. His hopes of getting back on the stage give Sven the strength he needs to fight the disease. But when his condition deteriorates and his mother, also an actor, proves unreliable, Lisa takes the reins and whisks her brother back to Switzerland.

BLOODY NOSE, EMPTY POCKETS
CinemaxX 3 – 19:00

Directed by: Bill Ross
Short Description: In this film, one can find the protagonists in the shadow of the glitzy world of Las Vegas, in a bar called Roaring 20s, which is on the brink of closure. Always observing, but nonetheless, in the thick of it, they accompany the last 24 hours in and around the bar, enabling the viewer to immerse themselves in a microcosm that might well be found in many places in the world but that nobody likes to look at too closely.

EXTRACTIONS
Cubix 5 – 20:30

Extractions © Thirza Cuthand

Directed by: Thirza Cuthand
Short Description: Extractions parallels resource extraction with the booming child apprehension industry. As the filmmaker reviews how these industries have affected her, she reflects on having her own eggs retrieved and frozen to make an Indigenous baby.

HAMA’AZIN
Cubix 5 – 20:30

HaMa'azin © Shiri Kuban

Directed by: Omer Sterenberg
Short Description: He is young and works for Israeli military intelligence. On headphones, he listens in on the conversations of Palestinians. The phonecalls of one gay couple, in particular, begin to fascinate him more and more. Privy to the complicated relationship between the two as it unfolds, he doesn’t know whether and, if so, in what way he should follow his feelings. For here, too, the private is political, and the most intimate things of all can lead to disaster.

BUSHIDO ZANKOKU MONOGATARI
CinemaxX 8 – 21:30

Directed by: Tadashi Imai
Short Description: The attempted suicide of his fiancée prompts a Japanese salary-man to read his family chronicles and look back at the life of his ancestors. They were samurai, the military nobility caste who carried out acts of violence at the behest of feudal lords, but suffered even more so under their cruelty, often forced into ritual suicide (seppuku). The women were under constant threat of kidnapping and rape, and the men subjected to arbitrary disfigurement and homosexual slavery.

INFLORESCENCE
Cubix 9 – 21:30

Directed by: Nicolaas Schmidt
Short Description: Autumn again on planet Earth. Eternally united, a couple of pink rose petals endure the slings and arrows of a heavy thunderstorm. A romantic-conceptualist bedtime story of resistance and redundancy, or the awkward ambivalence of truth, dream, life and love.

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TEDDY TODAY: Saturday the 22nd of February 2020

Download the complete venues here

As the third day of the Berlinale is slowly approaching with more insightful events and screenings, we have prepared for you another selection of films that will be screened today all around Berlin.
Also, in case you missed any of the screenings we announced the other two days, you can find the re-screenings (with their location as well as times) at the end of this list.

Have fun creating your very own watchlist!

MINYAN
Cubix 7 – 15:30

Directed by: Eric Steel
Short Description: New York in the 1980s. Seventeen-year-old David, who is tentatively beginning to express his homosexuality in the East Village gay scene, gradually starts to question the strict rules of his Jewish community.

WHO CAN PREDICT WHAT WILL MOVE YOU
CinemaxX 3 – 15:30

Who-Can-Predict-What-Will-Move-You © Jack Davis

Directed by: Livia Huang
Short Description: “Nervous?” – “A little.” Two young men shooting hoops somewhere in Brooklyn. In the gradually gathering dusk, their shadows dance, entwined, to the cadence of basketball meeting pavement. Farewell is in the air. Emotions emerge to the surface. Tentatively, gently, director Livia Huang’s densely atmospheric film tells of desire and intimacy through gazes and gestures. What is memory, what is perhaps merely a dream? Or is everything dance in the end?

PARIS CALLIGRAMMES
Haus der Berliner Festspiele – 16:15

Directed by: Ulrike Ottinger
Short Description: From a topographic perspective, Ulrike Ottinger’s cinema is mostly located between Berlin and remote places in the Far East or the Far North. In Paris Calligrammes, she explores the landscape of her memories of the city that she called home for 20 years and that helped shape her beginnings as a painter and filmmaker. Nonetheless, the film maintains its intimate stance throughout, assembling a rich and emotionally charged repertoire of film clips, news reports, photos and songs with the same meticulous affection that people used to stick newspaper clippings and photos in a diary so they could write around them.

THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Delphi Filmpalast – 16:30

The-Twentieth-Century © Voyelles Films

Directed by: Matthew Rankin
Short Description: Toronto, 1899. The young William Lyon Mackenzie King is running for the office of prime minister. The satirical and anarchic fantasy biopic The Twentieth Century explores the tribulations of the young politician, who would go on to become a long-serving prime minister of Canada. Serious Oedipal conflicts, an obsession with worn shoes and anti-masturbation therapies make it difficult for the young Mackenzie King to pursue his calling. Driven on by his authoritarian mother, he stumbles through a claustrophobic world in the grip of a bitter winter in search of love.

PETITE FILLE
CinemaxX 3 – 19:00

Directed by: Sébastien Lifshitz
Short Description: When she grows up, she will be a girl. This is something Sasha has dreamed of since childhood. Her family soon realises how serious she is. In addition to interviews with the parents, who acknowledge their daughter as such without hesitation, the film depicts the family’s tireless struggle against a hostile environment as well as their everyday lives. We see Sasha at play, practising ballet and during a visit to a therapist specialising in gender identities. At school, Sasha is not allowed to appear as a girl but must wear gender-specific boys’ clothes.

VIL, MÁ
Kino Arsenal 1 – 20:00

Directed by: Gustavo Vinagre
Short Description: A drawing room with salmon-coloured walls, tapestries, busts, house plants, a dressmaker’s dummy. In a velvet armchair with gold trim sits Wilma Azevedo, 74, Brazil’s “queen of sadomasochistic literature”. She is asked by the director to tell the story of her life, which quickly branches out into a series of detailed erotic anecdotes involving green bananas, dildos made of sandpaper and over-stimulated nerves. In static shots of a moving figure, a still life of passions retold comes into focus.

AUTOMOTIVE
CinemaxX 1 – 20:30

Directed by: Jonas Heldt
Short Description: In Ingolstadt, 20-year-old Sedanur spends her nights sorting car parts on the assembly line for the robots. Times are tough because Audi is about to cut a tenth of its workforce. Sedanur has no desire to find a husband and have children. She dreams of driving her own Mercedes one day. But when the diesel crisis kicks in, she is one of the first to be let go. At the same time, 33-year old Eva, a headhunter working for Audi, is looking for experts to automate some of their logistics. Eva knows that one day, even her own job will be replaced by algorithms. Two very different representatives of a generation in which, sooner or later, everyone will be replaceable, and for whom work as the basis of life is neither a certainty nor necessarily a source of identity.

LA CASA DELL’AMORE
Delphi Filmpalast – 21:30

The-House-of-Love © Effendemfilm and Lab 80 film

Directed by: Luca Ferri
Short Description: Throughout its 77 minutes, the film never once leaves the small Milan apartment of Bianca Dolce Miele. “I’m always here, any time,” she promises her clients in a deep, throaty voice. “Give me half an hour to put on something sexy for you.” Bianca’s appearances in this film are self-determined and withstand any kind of normative gaze. The punters and friends who come calling each bring their own understanding of Bianca and the role of her profession: one quotes from the Bible, another sings a murder ballad, a third sets up a pristine white table upon her ambiguously gendered body, from which he eats tinned meat.

SI C’ÉTAIT DE L’AMOUR
Zoo Palast 2 – 22:00

Directed by: Patric Chiha
Short Description: The film about Gisèle Vienne’s dance piece “Crowd” is a techno party gone rave, awash with repetitive movements, physical and emotional encounters between fifteen bodies charged with sexual energy. Through staged one-on-one conversations between the performers, we learn about the background story of their characters. In this way, the characters in the choreography become the characters of the film: there is a trans* boy, a “Nazi” boy that desires a gay boy, a girl attracted to troubled people and a woman who exudes raw sexuality.

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TEDDY TODAY: Thursday the 20th of February 2020

Download the complete venues here

Following in the footsteps of last year’s Teddy Award, we are going to create a blog article for each day of the Berlinale in order to keep you up to date with our Teddy films, where they will be screened as well as screening dates and times.

Starting from today, we will give you a little insight into all the queer movies of the 70th Berlinale.

Since the articles’ main purpose will be to inform you of all the queer films in the festival, don’t forget to also keep an eye on our social media channels because we’ve got more events coming up soon! Enough with the talking now. Here’s the first film of today’s article:

LAS MIL Y UNA

English translation: One in a Thousand
Directed by: Clarisa Navas
Short description: Iris is 17 and takes each day as it comes. When she meets the cool Renata, her life changes abruptly. While her friends explore their sexuality, Iris finds herself faced with new emotions and noisy rumours.

 

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The TEDDY AWARD 2020 Programme Guide!

We have something for all of you to get distracted by and to start planning your Berlinale schedules with! Here is the official TEDDY AWARD brochure with all queer films at the 70th Berlinale!

Take a look!

You’ll find all the important infos regarding our films, events and the TEDDY AWARD ceremony night – the full artist line-up for example!

Of course we also got you covered on how to get to the pop-up TEDDY BAR that will be open daily from February 17th – March 1st from 12pm onwards! Come hang out and have drinks and delicious pastries. Amazing, right?

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TEDDY ACTIVIST AWARD – WINNER

The TEDDY AWARD and the award donator HARALD CHRIST, entrepreneur and longtime TEDDY supporter, will present the TEDDY ACTIVIST AWARD for the first time this year. The award includes a donation of 5.000 € and will be presented annually in the future in the scope of the TEDDY AWARD ceremony. 

Inspired by the work and courage of so many activists who fight for the ongoing struggle of sexual and gender minorities all over the world, the TEDDY ACTIVIST AWARD honours people who work for change under difficult circumstances and in a non-supportive political and social environment and thus contribute to tolerance, acceptance, justice and equality in the world. In many parts of the world, this means putting oneself and the people around you at risk and exposing oneself to rejection, marginalization, isolation and persecution. The award is intended to honour the courage and determination of these people.

The TEDDY ACTIVIST AWARD 2020 goes to a group of activists who, at risk to their own lives, courageously and resolutely save and rescue persecuted homosexuals and transsexuals in Chechnya from imprisonment, torture and murder and bring them to safety. The TEDDY and Harald Christ pay tribute to these courageous people with deep respect and hope that this prize will help to ensure that the continuing silence and look away of the so-called “free world” finally turns into a worldwide outcry of indignation and that the perpetrators are ostracized and held accountable by the world community.

The Gay Pogrom in Chechnya:

On April 1, 2017, the Novaya Gazeta, an independent Russian newspaper, reported that government security officials were abducting, detaining, and torturing gay men in Chechnya, demanding that these men divulge the names of other gays whom they would then abduct, detain, and torture as well. Chechnya’s President Ramzan Kadyrov has openly described the goal of this campaign as an effort “to cleanse our blood.” He has called upon family members to carry out so-called “honor killings.”

There are no estimates of the number of the dead. Hundreds of Chechens have simply disappeared since the atrocities began, and hundreds more have escaped.

Leaders of the St. Petersburg-based Russian LGBTQI* Network established a hotline in the early days of the pogrom. They set up a series of secret safe-houses throughout the country, in partnership with other LGBTQI* organizations, especially The Moscow Community Center for LGBT+ Initiatives.

In the first two years, they moved 151 people out of the Chechnya and beyond the Russian border. Countries receiving them include Canada, Germany, France, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands, Argentina, and elsewhere. The US government rejected all applicants stemming from the pogrom. 

Response from Chechen Leadership:

Ramzan Kadyrov immediately denied the accusations when they first surfaced, calling them “lies.” What’s more, he says it is impossible to carry out such crimes because they “don’t have that kind of people here. We don’t have gays.” Despite these statements, Kadyrov has publicly endorsed so-called “honor killings,” urging families to murder relatives suspected of being gay, lesbian, or transgender. His press secretary stated: “If there were such people in Chechnya, the law-enforcement agencies wouldn’t need to have anything to do with them because their relatives would send them to a place of no return.” Those who commit such murders face no criminal ramifications. Russian President Vladimir Putin accepted Kadyrov’s denials. Yet under pressure from international leaders, Putin briefly moved forward with a widely criticized investigation, which found no witnesses and victims willing to give testimony, fearing retribution. The Kremlin claimed the lack of testimony was proof that no human rights abuses had occurred. 

Lesbians and Transgender Women and Men are Also Targeted:

Although much of the reporting on this subject has focused on gay men, Chechen lesbians and transgender women have reported similar treatment. Survivors have commonly spoken about forced religious exorcisms and involuntary commitments to psychiatric hospitals, as well as torture and detention. Evidence has also surfaced of so-called “honor killings” of lesbians. 

Women have little autonomy in Chechnya’s interpretation of Islam. Male family members generally accompany them when they are outside of their homes, making their efforts to escape to safety even more difficult — and dangerous — than for men.

The Victims are Being Hunted Around the World:

Since the operational goal of Kadyrov’s government is the elimination from the Chechen bloodline of LGBTQI people, fleeing the country doesn’t give victims safety.  Authorities pressure Chechen families to hunt them down and return them for execution. And their reach is surprisingly far. There is a vast global diaspora of people who fled during the two Chechnya wars. 

In November 2019, officials called upon diaspora members to enforce Chechen mores wherever they live. In remarks widely seen as referring to gay people, Kadyrov’s right-hand man said: “I’m telling you, those who live in Europe, America and Canada: Stop such people! By law, with our traditions and customs, we should resolve their problem,” said Adam Delimkhanov. “We implore you, don’t let them embarrass the honor of our nation.”  There have been cases of Chechens being tricked into returning or being forced in their new country to record denials of their homosexuality. Some have been attacked in their host countries. 

It’s Not a Good Time to be Gay in Much of the World:

The persecution of gay people is not exclusive to Chechnya. According to ILGA-Europe, there are 70 countries worldwide where being gay is criminalized, including 11 countries where the death penalty could be imposed.

However, what is happening in Chechnya is categorically different. It is the only government since Nazi Germany to round up LGBTQI people for extermination. 

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

Masha Gessen, “The Gay Men Who Fled Chechnya’s Purge, New Yorker, July 3, 2017 https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/07/03/the-gay-men-who-fled-chechnyas-purge 

Masha Gessen, “Fleeing Anti-Gay Persecution in Chechnya, Three Young Women Are Now Stuck in Place,” New Yorker, October 1, 2018 https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/fleeing-anti-gay-persecution-in-chechnya-three-young-women-are-now-stuck-in-place

“They Have Long Arms and They Can Find Me: Anti-Gay Purge by Local Authorities in Russia’s Chechen Republic,” A Human Rights Watch Report, May 26, 2017 https://www.hrw.org/report/2017/05/26/they-have-long-arms-and-they-can-find-me/anti-gay-purge-local-authorities-russias 

“Honor Kill: How the Ambitions of a Famous LGBT Activist Awoke a Terrible Ancient Custom in Chechnya, Elena Milashina,” Novaya Gazetta, April 1, 2017 https://novayagazeta.ru/articles/2017/04/01/71983-ubiystvo-chesti 

“Novaya Gazetta Learned of New Gay Persecution in Chechnya,” Novaya Gazetta, January 11, 2019 https://novayagazeta.ru/news/2019/01/11/148260-chechnya 

ILGA Europe, “Sexual Orientation Laws in the World, 2019” https://ilga.org/downloads/ILGA_Sexual_Orientation_Laws_Map_2019.pdf