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.
TIMETABLE
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
Athina Rachel Tsangari, Lia Hietala & Hannah Reinikainen, Ray Yeung, Omer Sterenberg and Gil Baroni
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.
Here we are now.. at the end of our ten-day journey. We hope you feel more enriched than before and that you discovered some amazing films that you will further recommend. To all of you film lovers or people who are just discovering the wonders of the cinematic universe, here are some last screenings for today.
We hope everyone is just as excited about these new films as we are! Days are getting fuller and busier at the 70th Berlinale and we want to make sure you don’t miss out on anything and are able to find information easily.
Here you can discover today’s selection of films. As usual, the re-screenings can be found at the bottom of the page.
Don’t forget to keep an eye on our social media channels to keep yourself up to date with our events, interviews and so much more!
Sommerhaus Filmproduktion; Produzenten: J. Laube, M. Jungfleisch; Regie: Burhan Qurbani; Kamera: Yoshi Heimrath
Directed by: Burhan Qurbani Short Description: Francis has survived his escape from North Africa. When he wakes up on a beach in the south of Europe, he is determined to live a regular, decent life from now on. But he winds up in present-day Berlin where a stateless person without a work permit is treated just as mercilessly as the labourer Franz Biberkopf in Döblin’s classic novel of German modernism. Francis initially resists an offer to deal drugs in Hasenheide park, but then comes under the influence of Reinhold, his neurotic, sex-addicted pal who takes him in. When Francis meets club owner Eva and, after several dramatic experiences, the escort girl Mieze, he feels he’s found something for the first time, something he’s never known before: a little bit of happiness.
Directed by: David France Short Description: In 2017, the LGBTQI* community, human rights defenders and allies all over the world were shocked by the devastating news of crimes being committed in the Russian republic of Chechnya. In a coordinated action, the authorities were rounding up gay and bisexual men and women, and taking them to illegal prison facilities where they were tortured and forced to out others, with the result that they were either executed or released to their families where they were often subjected to “honour killings”.
Directed by: Adrien Mérigeau Short Description: There is chaos everywhere: in her head and outside, in the big city. Things are taking on a life of their own. Young Reine is on the search, but she does not know what she is looking for. In delicate drawings and fluid animations, we see the world through her eyes and her perception becomes tangible.
Directed by: Heinz Emigholz Short Description: An archaeologist and a weapons designer, who knew each other in a previous life as a filmmaker and a psychoanalyst, meet at an excavation site in the Negev desert and begin a conversation about love and war. A series of encounters with alternating actors in different roles ensues, which leads the viewer through the cities of Athens, Berlin, Hong Kong and São Paulo.
Directed by: Daniel Nolasco Short Description: Sandro’s life is somewhat monotonous. He works in a fertiliser factory, goes swimming and spends his evenings doing jigsaw puzzles of landscapes. Sandro has a purely sexual relationship with his colleague Ricardo. He always seems to be a bit of an outsider, not comfortable in his own skin, not really belonging. When Maicon, a man straight out of a Tom-of-Finland illustration, shows up in their small town and flirts with Ricardo, Sandro’s burgeoning feelings of jealousy set a change in motion.
Directed by: Amalie Næsby Fick Short Description: One kiss on the roof on a warm night in Copenhagen and Cathrine, in her early twenties, can no longer keep a grip on her life. On the one hand, there’s her colleague Selma, from whom she wants more after that first kiss. On the other, there’s her boyfriend Simon. For him, what little they have is actually plenty, and for some time now, even less has been enough for Simon in bed. For Cathrine, who works at a call centre giving tips on sex and love, it’s definitely not enough, and after Selma’s kiss she doesn’t know what to do. Torn between regret and desire, she drags everyone who loves her and who she loves into her chaos.
Directed by: John Mackenzie Short Description: Cockney gang boss Harold Shand wants to go legit and make London the “capital of Europe” by building an Olympic stadium in the Docklands. He is hoping to persuade the New York mafia to invest in the venture. But no sooner have its representatives arrived before Harold runs into problems. Two members of his gang have been murdered and he himself is almost killed by a bomb. To save face with the Americans, he needs to find the culprits right away – and he’s not squeamish about how he does it..
Directed by: Rosa von Praunheim Short Description: In the commentary, the word “gay” is uttered 90 times, which was still being used in the context of hate speech in 1971, two years after the abolition of Section 175 of the German criminal code, which criminalized homosexual acts between males. Delivered in a declamatory tone in voiceover to silent images showing clichéd gay scenes, the commentary provoked those unwilling to hear anything about it and those who were suffering from the use of the term in equal measure. It is a rare example of a film that has had a direct socio-political impact.
Directed by: Ray Yeung Short Description: With practised movements, Hong Kong taxi driver Pak gets ready, polishes the traditional bright red paint of his car to a high shine and picks up his granddaughter from school. In search of anonymous sex, he meets Hoi, who is retired, divorced and also a grandfather. After a first fleeting encounter, they begin to spend time together more often. But just one late-night text message threatens to throw their everyday lives off-balance.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
