\nThe Taste of Betel Nut<\/p>\n
Hong Kong, China 2017
\n84′
\nDirector: Hu Jia<\/p>\n
Li Qi is working for a dolphin show, his friend Ren Yu chugs along with his mobile karaoke, working the surfers\u2019 beach along the coast of Hainan Island where they both live. The tourists are delighted by Ren\u2019s physical similarity to the screen actor Leslie Cheung and are happy to pay for a photo with him \u2013 or to get drunk with him. When a young woman joins this polyamorous couple, things are no different at first and an open, three-way relationship would seem possible. Together, Li Qi, Ren Yu and Bai Ling set out to test the limitations of a restrictive society as well as their own sexuality. But then, something happens that rocks the protagonists to the core and will have a deep and lasting effect on them … Director Hu Jia portrays a generation that would appear to move casually between tradition and a courageously alternative way of life. The film\u2019s unusual setting is compelling from the word go. Largely without dialogue, this drama instead relies on small gestures that are full of meaning. The film\u2019s quietly explicit images tell a tale of love, sex, trust and brutality \u2013 providing a picture of everyday life in China that is seldom seen on the big screen.<\/p>\n
14.02. \/ 22:45 CineStar 3<\/span><\/p>\n Call me by your Name<\/u><\/b><\/span> Italy\/France 2017 It\u2019s the hot, sun-drenched summer of 1983 and Elio is at his parents\u2019 country seat in northern Italy. The seventeen-year-old idles away the time listening to music, reading books and swimming until one day his father\u2019s new American assistant arrives at their large villa. Oliver is charming and, like Elio, has Jewish roots; he is also young, self-confident and good looking. At first Elio is somewhat cold and distant towards the young man but before long the two begin going out together on excursions. Elio begins to make tentative overtures towards Oliver that become increasingly intimate \u2013 even if, as Oliver says, \u2018one can\u2019t talk about such things\u2019. As the short summer progresses, the pair\u2019s mutual attraction grows more intense. Director Luca Guadagnino co-wrote the screenplay \u2013 which is based on the novel of the same name by Andr\u00e9 Aciman \u2013 with US director James Ivory and Walter Fasano. Guadagnino transposes the memories of the book\u2019s first-person narrator Elio into quietly atmospheric images. Besides the two main characters of this unexpected coming-out story (played by Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet and Armie Hammer) the film also boasts a third leading role in the shape of the seductive landscape.<\/p>\n 14.02. \/ 12:00 CinemaxX 7<\/span><\/p>\n Cuateros<\/strong><\/span> Argentina 2016 Albertina Carri wants to make a film about Isidro Vel\u00e1zquez, an almost mythical outlaw figure from northern Argentina who was shot dead by police in 1967. She\u2019s not the only one interested in him: her sociologist father Roberto Carri wrote a book on him called \u201cPreRevolutionary Forms of Violence\u201d and a film was made about his story, although both father and film disappeared during the Dirty War. Legends, families, political alignments, cinema: none offer a stable foothold and Carri\u2019s passage through them is like wandering a garden of forking paths, only to arrive at a landscape of cracked earth and thorns. Carri\u2019s narration is anyway not what it might once have been, a mother doesn\u2019t tell things the same way as a daughter. Legends, families, political alignments, cinema: each produces images and these are what appear on the screen, in one channel, three channels, five. It\u2019s all material plucked from an archive and a wonderfully eccentric one at that: news reels, ads, home videos, interviews, movies, abstract forms. Images that could stem from old films, lost films, new films, possible films, impossible films; this is a film for which no other images will do<\/p>\n 14.02. \/ 22:00 Zoo Palast 2<\/span><\/p>\n Discreet<\/strong><\/span><\/span> USA 2017 Bacon sizzling in fat, a young woman thanking the subscribers of her YouTube channel, a corpse neatly wrapped up in black garbage bags and floating down a river \u2013 as clear as the first few images of Travis Mathews\u2019 mystery thriller may be, the connections only become clearer gradually, as if they were emerging from the subconscious. This elliptically edited story, which revolves around a man who can no longer be described as young, is accompanied by an eerie soundscape. Filmmaker Alex lives in a van. He sets up his camera in rural areas in the US and in the no-man\u2019s land near highways. During a visit to his alcoholic mother one day she shares with him a well-kept secret. There is also a small boy, with whom Alex develops an unexpectedly close relationship. Director Mathews chronicles a modern day gay existence in the West \u2013 from anonymous sex to heterosexual porn in a sex bar cabin, or as a service in a motel room. A small house and a life on the margins of society. Meanwhile, on the radio, we are treated to a steady stream of rightwing slogans against everything that is not white and heterosexual, here in Texas.<\/p>\n 14.02. \/ 22:30 Colosseum 1<\/span><\/p>\n Fluid\u00f8<\/span><\/span><\/strong> Germany 2017 It is the year 2060 and AIDS has been eradicated. However, in some, the HIV virus has now mutated into a gene from which a drug can be produced that has become the white powder of the twenty-first century. A virtual scanning system enables the secret police to identify anyone who carries this gene. Meanwhile, elsewhere, young men are hooked up to a system of cables and ordered to produce sperm for the production of pharmaceuticals that will dominate the market. Filmed in Berlin, Taiwan-born multimedia artist and filmmaker Shu Lea Cheang\u2019s science fiction dystopia revolves around a struggle to gain control over the production and exploitation of bodily fluids. Her film is like an orgiastic opera; a breathless round of bodies, secretions, performances and sexual acts often performed in the service of an overriding economy. An unusual, largely experimental and deliberately parapornographic drama in which the borders between the sexes as well as homo-, hetero, bi, trans- or intersexual are constantly blurred.<\/p>\n 14.02. \/ 22:45 CinemaxX 7<\/span><\/p>\n Freak Show<\/span><\/span><\/strong> USA 2017 Being fabulous, no: being relentlessly fabulous is damn hard work. I should know. I’ve dedicated my life to the pursuit of it.\u2019 Could Billy Bloom be like everyone else if he wanted to? It would certainly save him a whole lot of trouble. But he has absolutely no desire to be like them. When others call him theatrical, he takes it as a compliment; when his classmates feel provoked by his drive to be different, it only motivates him further. \u2018The nail that sticks out gets hammered down\u2019, his father warns him. That does not deter Billy from deciding to run for homecoming queen. Somewhere in-between David Bowie, Lady Gaga, Freddy Mercury and Oscar Wilde, in the transgressive space of pop culture and dressed up as a high school comedy with wit, heart and a dazzling cast, Freak Show is about the violence of conformity and the power of self-determination<\/p>\n 14.02. \/ 16:30 CinemaxX 3<\/span><\/p>\n Kometen<\/span><\/span><\/strong> Sweden 2016 The sea. High waves. Dark water. A border fence, two men in hiding. Their flight begins. Only one of them will reach Sweden. One of the men is played by Abdi Aziis, who himself has fled from Somalia to Sweden in order to escape the oppression and persecution of gay men. \u201cHe is our comet\u201d explains director Victor Lindgren, who, in merely a few selected situations, manages to convey the exertions, the deep abyss, the arrival and the loneliness of those who flee. Both men lay alongside each other on a bench, one arm extended across the other\u2019s belly \u2013 an image that symbolizes their intimacy, their shared experience. And in the next moment it\u2019s all gone. Forever. How can life go on? Victor Lindgren\u2019s film Ta av mig was conferred with a TEDDY Award for Best Short Film at the 2013 Berlinale.<\/p>\n 14.02. \/ 17:00 Colosseum 1<\/span><\/p>\n The Misandrists<\/span><\/strong><\/span> Germany 2017 91′ Somewhere in Ger(wo)many … A radical female \u2018army of lovers\u2019 is preparing itself for a final revolution. Women are discussing, campaigning, menstruating and pondering the decline of patriarchy, learning about single sex reproduction, and having sex. But then of all people a young soldier appears, seeking refuge at this feminist convent; moreover, one of the women-warriors turns out to be a police informer. This brings their strict superintendent on the scene. And \u2018big mother\u2019 is not amused. \u201cTwo cocks! And a cop! In our house! That\u2019s intolerable!\u201d But one question remains: is it possible to have equality in a corrupt system? Or will cocks need to roll first?! As if Valerie Solanas had directed an episode of \u2018Schoolgirl\u2019s Report\u2019, Bruce LaBruce\u2019s latest piece of shenanigans revolves around a utopian world without men. The Canadian director, experienced Berlinale guest and Teddy award-winner (for Pierrot Lunaire) serves up a merry, anarchic dance in which political slogans fall as trippingly off the tongue as religious acclamations. Their sermons are \u2013 naturally \u2013 rounded off with \u2018A(wo)men\u2019. Sarcastic, very funny \u2013 and as queer as it gets.<\/p>\n 14.02. \/ 20:15 CineStar 3<\/span><\/p>\n La prima sueca<\/span><\/span><\/strong> Argentina 2016 It’s not long to go until Cata’s 15th birthday and she’s getting more nervous by the day. She’s irritated about her dress, her chilled-out friends, everything! Even her level-headed and reserved cousin from Sweden annoys her. But Cata’s moodiness gradually gives way to tentative feelings of affection. In a sensitive portrayal the two directors gently capture the emotional whirlwind and irritations of a teenager.<\/p>\n Strong Island<\/span><\/span><\/strong> USA\/Denmark 2017 In a phone call at the beginning of Yance Ford\u2019s film an employee for the district attorney refuses to make any more statements regarding the murder of William Ford and declares herself unwilling to take part in his documentary. William was Yance Ford\u2019s brother; his murder in 1992 threw his family into a state of shock. Their devastation came about not just because this young Afro-American man was shot and killed by a white car mechanic for an apparently trifling reason, but also because of what was to follow. Ford\u2019s subjective camera tells the story of a black middle-class family in America, a country which was, and still is, characterised by injustice and racism. His film is a puzzle, the pieces of which cannot be put together. Interweaving personal essay, detective investigation and documentary interviews with friends and relatives, he succeeds in painting a personal and political picture of the mood of this unequal country during the Obama era. Ford\u2019s concentrated, often minimalistic cinematic language describes simmering anger, grief and his own transgender coming out \u2013 as well as the relativity of equal opportunities.<\/p>\n 14.02. \/ 13:30 International<\/span><\/p>\n V\u00eanus – Fil\u00f3 a fadinha l\u00e9sbica<\/span><\/span><\/strong> Brazil 2017 In this animated fairy-tale Filly, a lesbian fairy with nimble fingers, seduces women by day dressed as a boy. But at night something strange happens and soon half the population of Whatsit Village are eagerly queuing up.<\/p>\n 14.02. \/ 22:45 CinemaxX 7<\/span><\/p>\n Ein Weg<\/span><\/span><\/strong> Germany 2017 A kiss by the sea, a promise for life. Who goes to the Baltic coast in the autumn? Nobody except Martin and Andreas. They come here every year and, every year, their son Max is a bit taller, and their own faces a bit older. This time Martin is fed up. The weather\u2019s unpleasant and he\u2019d much rather have stayed at home. Andreas on the other hand tears off his clothes and jumps into the freezing sea. A worried Martin tries to stop him and, stumbling, gulps down the salty water. Back at their holiday home the mood is weighed down by their different expectations of how they should spend their holidays together. What do they have left after all these years? So many films about relationships end at the point when the couple have found each other. For director Chris Miera however this is precisely the moment when the interesting stories begin. What is the force that causes two people out of billions to decide to spend so much of their lives together? And what makes couples decide to part after such a long time? These are the questions that Ein Weg (Paths) sensitively investigates.<\/p>\n 14.02. \/ 12:00 Colosseum 1<\/span> Weirdos<\/span><\/span><\/strong> Canada 2016 \u2018I am a weirdo.\u2019 \u00b7 \u2018Honey, she is a weirdo, too. We are all weirdos. That\u2019s what makes us beautiful.\u2019 In laconic black-and-white, Bruce McDonald tells the humorous story of two adolescent runaways, Kit and Alice. On the eve of the 1976 United States Bicentennial, the film accompanies the two hitchhikers on a turbulent journey through the breathtaking landscape of the Canadian east coast, set to a quintessentially 1970s soundtrack. While Kit wants to start a new life in his glamorous but unstable mother’s artist commune, Alice makes no bones about her longing for romance. Yet in the glow of the crackling campfire of a beach party, they both reach new insights that put their relationship to the test. Likewise, the day following their joyous reunion sees Kit and his mother facing up to some uncomfortable truths.<\/p>\n 14.02. \/ 15:30 Zoo Palast 1<\/span><\/p>\n \n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Halftime, my friends! The first half of the festival is over, now hurry! You didn\u00b4t watch enough movies? Go for it, because there are only 5 days left! \u201cWe\u00b4re all weirdos, that\u00b4s what makes us beautiful\u201d is a quote from the film \u201cWeirdos\u201d from Bruce McDonald which you can watch over the next three days … Continue reading Day 6: “we\u00b4re all weirdos, that\u00b4s what makes us beautiful!”<\/span> ![\"OK_201719583_4-min\"](\"http:\/\/blog.teddyaward.tv\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/OK_201719583_4-min.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n
\n
\nCall me by your Name<\/p>\n
\n130′,
\nDirector: Luca Guadagnino<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
\n
\nRustlers<\/p>\n
\n85′
\nDirector: Albertina Carri<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
\n
\nDiscreet<\/p>\n
\n81′
\nDirector: Travis Mathews<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
\n
\nFluid\u00f8<\/p>\n
\n80′
\nDirector: Shu Lea Cheang<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
\n
\nFreak Show<\/p>\n
\n95′
\nDirector: Trudie Styler<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
\n
\nThe Comet<\/p>\n
\n11′
\nDirector: Victor Lindgren
\nCast: Abdi Aziis<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
\n
\nThe Misandrists<\/p>\n
\nDirector: Bruce LaBruce
\nCast: Susanne Sachsse, Viva Ruiz, Kembra Pfahler, Caprice Crawford<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
\n
\nSwedish Cousin<\/p>\n
\n20′
\nDirector: In\u00e9s Mar\u00eda Barrionuevo, Agustina San Mart\u00edn
\nCast: Mar\u00eda Paula Mattio, Cecilia Valenzuela Gioia, \u00c1mbar Taborda Ceballos, Nazarena Garc\u00eda<\/p>\n<\/a>
\n 14.02. \/ 11:30 CinemaxX 3<\/span><\/p>\n
\n
\nStrong Island<\/p>\n
\n107′
\nDirector: Yance Ford<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
\n
\nVenus – Filly the lesbian little fairy<\/p>\n
\n6′
\nDirector: S\u00e1vio Leite
\nCast: Helena Ignez<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
\n
\nPaths<\/p>\n
\n107′
\nDirector: Chris Miera
\nCast: Mike Hoffmann, Mathis Reinhardt, Tom B\u00f6ttcher, Cai Cohrs<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
\n 14.02. \/ 21:00 CinemaxX 1<\/span><\/p>\n
\n
\nWeirdos<\/p>\n
\n84′
\nDirector: Bruce McDonald
\nCast: Dylan Authors, Julia Sarah Stone, Molly Parker, Allan Hawco<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n