The time has come: the program for the TEDDY Screenings 2021 is fixed! During the Berlinale Summer Special, from June 09 – June 20, 21, the screenings of the films nominated for the TEDDY AWARD will take place in different open air cinemas. The screening dates and cinema addresses can be found under the respective film descriptions.
An overview about the TEDDY AWARD 2021 film selection you can find on our website.
Curated by Panorama and organised with the Queer Academy, A Directors Exchange analyses the work of filmmakers whose films are being presented at the festival and are in contention for the TEDDY AWARD.
11.30am – 12.30pm: A Directors Exchange on Queering the Framework – In conversation with Patric Chiha and Matthew Rankin
Patric Chiha, director of Si c’était de l’amour, and Matthew Rankin, director of The Twentieth Century, use various styles and artistry in their films to queer the framework where stories told through dance and theatrical staging become celebrations of transformation.
Patric Chiha:
Born in Vienna, Austria in 1975, he studied fashion design in Paris and then film editing at the INSAS film school in Brussels. His short and documentary films have screened at several festivals. His feature film debut Domaine, starring Béatrice Dalle, premiered at the 2009 Venice Film Festival. His documentary Brothers of the Night screened in the 2016 Panorama.
Matthew Rankin:
Born in Winnipeg, Canada in 1980. He studied at the Department of History and Classical Studies at McGill University in Montreal, as well as Université Laval in Quebec. In 2011, Rankin participated at Berlinale Talents. Following numerous short films, The Twentieth Century is his first feature film.
Moderation: Ana David
1pm – 2pm: A Directors Exchange on New Queer German Cinema – In conversation with Faraz Shariat and Leonie Krippendorff
Two films with a fresh take on coming of age and coming to terms with ideas of home and belonging in a post-migrant society. Faraz Shariat, director of Futur Drei and Leonie Krippendorff, director of Kokon, talk about their motivations, inspirations and desires for creating their own stories.
Faraz Shariat:
Born in Cologne, Germany in 1994, he worked first as a director and actor at Schauspiel Köln and on video installations for the Staatstheater Hannover before studying dramatic arts at the University of Hildesheim. His work focuses on post-migrant experiences and stories about immigrant families. His debut feature film, Futur Drei, evolved from his autobiographical documentaries exploring his family history and from his work as a translator for refugees. The film was developed in collaboration with Paulina Lorenz and Raquel Molt in the Jünglinge film collective, where the three have been working together ever since they met at university.
Leonie Krippendorff:
Born in Berlin, Germany in 1985, she studied directing at the Film University Babelsberg Konrad Wolf from 2009 to 2016. Her graduation film, Looping, was nominated for numerous national and international prizes and won several. The screenplay for her debut feature film, Kokon, was selected for the 2018 Berlinale Talents Script Station. She is currently working on the screenplays for two new feature film projects. Variety chose her as one of “10 Europeans to Watch 2020.”
Moderation: Nastaran Tajeri-Foumani
Free admission / The events are held in English.
The Queer Academy is an annual convention of international filmmakers and festival organizers in the gay-lesbian-transgender context 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.
1pm – 1.30pm:
KEYNOTE – Darick Qin, Director of Operations, ShanghaiPRIDE
Established in 2009, ShanghaiPRIDE has faced extraordinary challenges in its fight to show queer films. Battling censorship and legal issues, every year it is more than a film festival, becoming a central cultural community event sharing screen stories about the love, hardships, growth and triumphs of LGBTQI* in China.
1.30pm – 3.30pm:
PANEL: From Shorts to Series – Interdisciplinary Storytelling in Queer Narratives
In conversation with:
Athina Rachel Tsangari,
Director of Trigonometry, Berlinale Series
Lia Hietala & Hannah Reinikainen,
Directors of Always Amber, Berlinale Panorama
Ray Yeung,
Director of Suk Suk, Berlinale Panorama
Omer Sterenberg,
Director of HaMa’azin (Listening In), Berlinale Shorts
Gil Baroni,
Director of Alice Júnior, Berlinale Generation
Moderation: Kristian Petersen
The queer narratives on display are strong examples of the different approaches taken by filmmakers to share their stories. Series delve into the complex layers of a character; fiction features experiment with different forms of storytelling to communicate our desires; documentaries present the courage of people taking authorship of their stories; shorts compress a complex story conveying more with images than words. With the diverse guests from this year’s festival the potentials of cinematic approaches will be analysed and discussed.
Free Admission / The event is held in English.
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!
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
