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The Jury of the 38th TEDDY AWARD

We are delighted to present our international jury for the 38th TEDDY AWARD. This year, five renowned, creative festival and film professionals will decide on the winners of the TEDDY in the categories Best Feature Film, Best Short Film, Best Documentary / Essay Film and the TEDDY Jury Award from the queer films nominated at the Berlinale.

© Cory White

Cerise Howard (pronouns: she/her)

Melbourne Queer Film Festival

Programm Director

Cerise Howard was appointed as Program Director of the Melbourne Queer Film Festival in May 2023. She hails from Aotearoa New Zealand and has for several years been a co-curator of the Melbourne Cinémathèque. She co-founded the Czech and Slovak Film Festival of Australia and was its Artistic Director from 2013-2018; she was also a co-founding member of tilde: Melbourne Trans and Gender Diverse Film Festival. She has been a Studio Leader at RMIT University since 2019, specialising in courses interrogating the shortcomings of the canon and incubating film festivals. She is a long-time commentator and widely published writer on film; a regular broadcaster on Melbourne radio station 3RRR, and was a member of the International Jury Board of the East-West: Golden Arch Awards, celebrating Eurasian cinema, between 2018 and 2021.

© Angelo Charalambous

Diego Armando Aparicio (pronouns: he/ him)

Queer Wave: the Cyprus LGBTQIA+ Film Festival

Festival Director

Diego Armando Elia Aparicio (b. 1993) is the founder and artistic director of Queer Wave: the Cyprus LGBTQIA+ Film Festival. For his work on Queer Wave, he was one of 20 finalists worldwide shortlisted for the 2021 Commonwealth Youth Awards, amongst one thousand nominees from 43 countries. He is an alumnus of the Festival Atelier, the Future of Film Festivals Forum, the Global Cultural Relations Programme and Developing Your Film Festival. In 2018 he served as an official jury member for Giornate degli Autori at the Venice International Film Festival. He has assisted the Giornate programming team as pre-selector every year since 2019. In 2022 he was part of the selection panel for the European Parliament’s LUX Audience Award. He has worked in the production and direction departments for several international co-productions, including feature films and limited series which have premiered in Venice, the Cannes Critics’ Week and the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. He graduated with a physics degree from Imperial College London in 2016. He is a member of the European Film Academy. 

© Kami Sid

Kami Sid (pronouns: she/ her)

Aks International Minorities Festival

Artist and Curator

Kami Sid is a prominent transgender activist and artist from Karachi. She happens to be the first transgender fashion model from the region and has worked as an artist and speaker in several fictions and documentaries in the past. Kami runs a community based queer youth organisation “Sub Rang” that mainly focuses on creating safe spaces and ensuring the well being of LGBTQ+ and non-binary people from urban Pakistan. She is also Coordinator at Humraz Male Health Society, working for HIV/AIDS and Mental Health . Kami has been working with Aks International festival as a head of Karachi chapter
since 2016, she has been successfully opening queer and trans dialogues with universities and public spaces in Karachi through Aks festival. In the past month, Kami made history by organizing the first Hijra
Festival, a trans led street festival with political agendas demanding equal rights for transgender/Hijra community of Pakistan. The Hijra festival was attended by thousands of transgender and queer community member from all over Pakistan. Kami has been awarded for her work on national and international platforms. As the producer of Aks festival in Pakistan, she has recently started Aks Out Reach project that is used as tool for sensitization and educational awareness across Pakistan. Kami organized Aks festival’s events in more than 12
different cities in 2022 and is eager to reach out to many more this year. Kami is also a trained mobile filmmaker for the empowerment of minorities and is currently working on her debut documentary on
trans youth in Pakistan as a director.

© Romero Rafael

Luís Fernando Moura (pronouns: they/ them)

fuga

FENDA – Experimental Festival of Film Arts

Janela Internacional de Cinema do Recife

Coordinator, Curator, Advisor

Curator, film researcher and audience designer born and based in Recife, Brasil, with a programming background at the festivals Janela Internacional de Cinema do Recife (programming coordinator, 2015-2023), Belo Horizonte International Short Film Festival (2017-2019) and forumdoc.bh – Documentary and Ethnographic Film Festival (2018), currently part of the programming team at FENDA – Experimental Festival of Film Arts (2022-2023). Developer of the platform fuga, aimed at the intercontinental exchange of dissident film. Curator of retrospective film collections including Brasil Distópico (2017), L.A. Rebellion (2017-2019) and CUIR – FILM Y EXPERIMENTO – LATINOAMÉRICA (2021).

© Andreas Bach

Vic Carmen Sonne (pronouns: she/ her)

Actor and Writer

Vic Carmen Sonne is an actress and writer based in Copenhagen, Denmark.  In 2016 Vic graduated from the Danish National School of Performing Arts, without prior formal education, and as the youngest applicant ever accepted. Throughout her career, Vic has been dedicated to forging emotional connections in cinema by challenging norms and illuminating the often-unseen complexities of human life. This dedication has manifested through nonconformist narratives, challenging stereotypes, and societal norms and is a defining feature of her filmography.  In 2016, Vic starred in Rasmus Heisterberg´s feature film IN THE BLOOD  for which she won a Bodil Award for Best Actress (the Danish Critic’s Association). Shortly after, she started her continuing collaboration with director Hlynur Palmason’s  when she boarded his WINTER BROTHERS, for which she received the Robert Award (the Danish Film Academy) for Best Supporting Actress.  In 2018 she starred in Isabella Eklöf´s Sundance premiere, the grand jury prize nominee  HOLIDAY . The film was recognized widely, awarding Vic with a Bodil for Best Actress.   In 2019, Vic was invited to sit on the feature narrative and documentary jury for Film Festival Oslo Fusion, a festival focusing on LHBTQIA2S+ and QTIBIPOC alongside Bartholomew Sammut.  Vic’s contributions to cinema were internationally acknowledged in 2020 with the Shooting Star award at the Berlinale. In 2022, Vic in “Godland,” Palmason, premiered at Cannes and was shortlisted for the Academy Awards’ Best International Feature. Vic’s coming projects include E.L. Katz’s “Azrael,” Milad Alami’s “Bullshit,” the Netflix series “The Helicopter Heist” created by Ronnie Sandahl and directed by Daniel Espinosa, and Magnus von Horn’s “The Girl with the Needle.” 

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Jury TEDDY AWARD 2023

We’re happy to announce the 37th TEDDY AWARD’s jury. Six renowned film- and festivalmakers are going to choose from this Berlinale’s queer movies, awarding the Best Feature Film and Best Short Film , Best Documentary/Essay Film and TEDDY Jury Award with a TEDDY AWARD.

Alfonso F. Escandón

Alfonso F. Escandón (pronouns he/him)

Festival Mix México
Subdirector

Alfonso F. Escandón was born in Mexico City and has been vice director, since 2005, of Festival MIX Mexico – Film and Sexual Diversity. He´s got a degree in Communication Sciences from the “Tecnológico de Monterrey” University and has diplomas in Film Direction and Screenwriting. He´s worked in the production area of ​​films by Luis Vélez, Jaime Aparicio, Julián Hernández, Roberto Fiesco, Ramón Cervantes, among others. Under his heteronym Constantino Escandón, he has written and directed the short films: The Raven, based on the poem by Edgar A. Poe (2000); The Lonely  (2005); Anonymous (2006); Lucio (2006); Philia (2007); in 2008 he adapted the poem “Ma prison” by Paul Verlaine, to make the short film of the same name and in 2009 he made the short film “Cerro de la Cruz” (with the support of the Mexican Institute of Cinematography) that was part of the “Onde” section of the 27th Torino Film Festival; he recently wrote and directed the feature film But infinite love will ascend in my soul (work in progress). Under his heteronym Celadón, he was the Director of Photography for the feature films: Torments (2008) by Alfredo Valencia, produced by Jaime Humberto Hermosillo and Someone else’s skin (work in progress) by Arturo Castelán. He has published two photography books: Male Emancipation Vol.1 – Sensation, and Male Emancipation Vol.2 – Melancholy, based on the poems of the same names by Arthur Rimbaud and Rubén Darío, respectively; his work has been exhibited both in Mexico and Spain.   

Darunee Terdtoontaveedej (pronouns she/they)

CinemAsia Film Festival
&
Singapore International Film Festival

Curator and Programmer

Darunee Terdtoontaveedej is a curator and cultural programmer based in The Hague. Formerly trained as an architect and designer, Terdtoontaveedej is interested in the intersection of alternative (his)stories, creative practices, and cinema. She is a co-founder of Non Native Native, a cultural platform which looks into the Asian creative landscape in the Netherlands through the lens of outsiders from within. She has programmed at festivals and institutions such as CinemAsia Film Festival (Amsterdam), International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR), Sinema Transtopia (Berlin), Objectifs Centre for Photography and Film (Singapore), and Singapore International Film Festival (SGIFF).  

Melanie Iredale

Melanie Iredale (pronouns she/her)

Birds’ Eye View
Director

Melanie Iredale is a film curator and agitator. Melanie was recently appointed as Director of Birds’ Eye View – a UK-wide charity with a mission to champion women & non-binary-led films, to build a community for them through its #ReclaimTheFrame project, and to advocate for equity in all film spaces.   Prior to this, Melanie was Deputy Director at Sheffield DocFest 2014-2021, leading on the development of its arts/interactive programme and co-programmer of its Rhyme & Rhythm strand, and before that served as Director of Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival 2009-2014, commissioning moving image art and performances that went on to win awards at International Film Festival Rotterdam and beyond.    Melanie has served on several juries including Nordisk Panorama in Sweden, ZagrebDox in Croatia, and Colombo International Women’s Film Festival in Sri Lanka. She is a proud Exec Producer of Harri Shanahan and Siân A.  Williams’ archive documentary Rebel Dykes, which has brought the queer, ally, and activist communities together at over 50+ festivals around the world.   

Sasha Prokopenko

Sasha Prokopenko (pronouns she/her)

Kyiv International Short Film Festival
Head of Programming

Sasha Prokopenko is a programmer, film curator and translator based in Kyiv, Ukraine. Sasha is a Head of Programming at the Kyiv International Short Film Festival. Since 2018, she’s been one of the curators of the Sexuality Matters section, focused on LGBTQIA+ rights, women’s rights, gender identity and sex positivity. Sasha also curates the Teen Screen section at the Molodist Kyiv International Film Festival. Since 2016, she has worked at the independent film distribution company, KyivMusicFilm, that distributes films on art, music and culture.  

Tom Oyer

Tom Oyer (pronouns he/him)

Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
Senior Vice President, Member Relations, Global Outreach and Awards Administration

Tom Oyer is the Senior Vice President of Member Relations, Global Outreach and Awards Administration at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, focusing on awards eligibility, submissions and voting.  As part of the Academy’s global outreach efforts, he has led presentations at such film festivals as Annecy, Cartagena, Docaviv, Doc Edge, Guadalajara, and the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam.  Additionally, Oyer has been featured on panels at DOC NYC, Palm Springs, Sheffield and SXSW and juries at Cleveland, Dallas, Hot Docs and Mountainfilm festivals.  Over the past 15 years at the Academy, Oyer has grown to oversee awards rules, the Animation, Documentary and Short Film categories and the Producers Branch.  He also helped to lead the Academy’s A2020 membership diversity initiative and the modernization of voting processes, including efforts to ensure global member participation through the launch of the Academy Screening Room, the Academy’s viewing platform.  

Xena Scullard

Xena Scullard (pronouns she/her)

The Queer Feminist Film Festival
Co-Founder and Convenor

Xena Scullard is a queer feminist activist, organiser and strategist. Xena has over a decade worth of experience working with queer and justice movements both locally within her context in SouthAfrica but also regionally and internationally. Xena is one of three co-founders and convenors of the first Queer Feminist Film Festival (QFFF) in South Africa which hosted it very first festival in 2018. QFFF consciously seeks to politicize intersectionality within our content curation and the ways in which we engage dialogue and art as a disruptive and generative tool for queer humans by queer humans. As a Senior Racial Equity Fellow under the Atlantic Fellows network, her work attempts tounearth and amplify the intersections between race, gender and justice. Xena currently works as an independent consultant with justice based organizations both regionally andinternationally. Xena’s work centers creative disruption, artistic strategy and situated solidarity building.   

News 2017, Teddy 2017

The jury of the MÄNNER reader´s award 2017

This year we will have again the MÄNNER reader´s award at the TEDDY AWARD, which will be presented by the readers´s jury and is endowed with a prize money of 1000 Euro, which should be used by the filmmakers to push new film projects forward.

From a huge selection of candidacies there were four character heads chosen, which you can have a look at here.

The prize of the MÄNNER-jury got named HARVEY, after one of the most important activists of the LGBTI history, Harvey Milk.

The AWARD CEREMONY takes place at Friday, 17.02.2017. The Award Ceremony starts at 21:00 & the After Show Lounge & TEDDY BACKSTAGE PARTY starts at 23:00