We welcome you to this year’s Berlinale and for to the TEDDY Award, your favourite queer Film prize – Welcome to the TEDDY wonderland, in which we will feed you with rainbow coloured sweets from the Berlin International Film Festival.
We start with a sweet from a remote place: the stories of a circus on an island, an artist lost in himself and the blue of the sea. So, come in, come in!
Name: Diego Trerotola
Country: Argentina
Festival: LGBTIQ Film Festival Asterisco
How do you like Berlin? What is special about the city for you?
Cinema is a my first map of the world, that’s why Berlin is, to me, a bunch of images from R. W. Fassbinder and Rosa von Praunheim and, above all, it’s Emil Jannings and his (my) uniform fetish through the eyes of F. W. Murnau in Der letzte Mann (1924). Big cities are great illusions, and Berlin gave that to me the first time I went there in 2010.
How would you describe the Berlinale in one sentence?
Huge, challenging, eccentric, but mostly fierce, bright and tender like a Golden Bear.
What was your first encounter with the TEDDY AWARD?
When I became a film critic in Buenos Aires, in the early 90s, I discovered the rise of the New Queer Cinema and the TEDDY at the same time. Todd Haynes’ Poison and Rose Troche’s Go Fish were my two ways of confirming the power of the TEDDY AWARD at that time.
In your eyes, what does the TEDDY AWARD symbolize? What does it stand for? What makes it unique?
The TEDDY is a quest for a different perspective in contemporary cinema as well as the meeting point for people related to world cinema and sexual and gender diversity. As a film festival programmer, it’s also a big influence, because the selection is always top-notch. On a personal level, the award’s logo, the bear drawing by Ralph König, is very hot, because of my erotic bear sensibility!
Tell us about a movie you’ve recently seen.
I discovered a new Susan Sontag in a documentary about her: a portrait of a great writer and filmmaker as well as a community of desire, literature and cinema during the late fifties and the sixties. Sontag was challenging the boundaries of her time with great, innovative views on culture, especially queer culture.
Tomorrow the Berlinale start and we are already excited!
Ten days of film, glamour and high society will begin and the Teddy is right in it – together with You! To assure that you will always be up to date, we will post daily news from the festival here on our Teddy Today pages. All information, trailers, pictures and interviews will be found here.
We are looking forward to it!
Missed the last TEDDY-news? No time to check our daily updates on our blog and social media? Don’t worry! Here’s everything you shouldn’t have missed.
Berlinale is two days away! This is not a drill! Yesterday, Panorama curator Wieland Speck gave an introduction to the queer films at Berlinale 2015. At Kino International, the queer film fans of Berlin came together.
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For everyone who couldn’t make it we can say this: the queer films at Berlinale this year will be great. For an overview, you can check them out on our website as well as on our blog. The TEDDY Programme Guide is also available for download. And just to give you an idea, here’s the trailer for one of the craziest queer films this year, the Swedish musical Dyke Hard:
Don’t forget that the TEDDY AWARD Opening Party at SchwuZ Club is this Friday! You can check out all the DJs here. We can assure you that it will be a night to remember. Lego & Marsmaedchen will play rock, Chance & Dark, Lucky Pierre and Ena Lind will provide you with electronic music and tons of other great DJs and artists will be there to entertain you!
The TEDDY wouldn’t be the TEDDY if, besides the music and the party, we wouldn’t also support important LGBTI causes. This year, we’ll have information booths concerning trans* issues and especially Chelsea Manning. The Whistle Blower has been sentenced to 35 years in prison. Chelsea has come out as a trans*woman over a year ago and still has to fight for the start of the hormonal treatment that was promised her by the US government. Chelsea Manning needs our support!
For those who want to read more about the TEDDY, we have been introducing the international TEDDY AWARD Jury on our blog all week. We also remembered the LGBTI activist David Kato on his 4th memorial anniversary and reported on Bombastic, the first LGBTI magazine in Uganda.
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As seen above, people were actually camping in front of the Berlinale ticket counters this week, so it’s safe to assume that you guys are just as excited as we are for Berlinale to finally start. This is the last Week in Review. Starting Thursday the TEDDY Todays on this blog will inform you daily about everything that’s happening at Berlinale. We are looking forward to a great festival with you!
Name: Gustavo Scofano
Country: Brazil
Festival: Festival do Rio, the Rio de Janeiro International Film Festival
How do you like Berlin? What is special about the city for you?
I love Berlin. I’ve been coming to the city since 2008 and it’s one of my favorite places still. It’s a cliché, but the amazing people there really make for an amazing time every year.
How would you describe the Berlinale in one sentence?
Great, very diverse programming, splendid market and some of the best parties on the festival circuit!
In your eyes, what does the TEDDY AWARD symbolize? What does it stand for? What makes it unique?
The award is amazing not only for its capacity of highlighting and giving visibility to films which would not normally get as much screen time, but also because of how pioneering it has always been. The way the award and foundation dialogue with the city’s art and queer scenes and the great web of filmmakers, artists and programmers from all over the world it has amassed over the past decades are also pretty remarkable.
Tell us about a movie you’ve recently seen.
It has to be two! Back in December I watched Konchalovsky’s The Postman’s White Nights, which I had missed earlier in the year and was awestruck. The amount of love and affection that the film shows for its characters is very heart-warming and that, combined with its glacial settings, made it a real experience for me.
The other one was Mike Nichols’ Heartburn. I watched it for the umpteenth time on New Year’s day and it only gets better. It really is the perfect film for me, if such a thing were to exist.
