Teddy Award 2010

Film Gallery

Aarekti Premer Golpo

In JUST ANOTHER LOVE STORY noted Bengali director Rituparno Ghosh plays a transsexual filmmaker. Ghosh’s character, Abhiroop Sen, is a documentary filmmaker from Delhi. He is in love with the director of photography of a documentary film on the celebrated Jatra actor Chapal Chaduri, now 75, who plays himself in the film. Rituparno: »The film makes us realise that taboos about sexuality haven’t changed that much. This film will lead to a very important cultural conversation. One can’t sit complacently and wait for a change in society.« Ghosh’s film LADY OF THE HOUSE was in the BERLINALE 2000 FORUM.

Amphetamine

Kafka (Byron Pang) is as beautiful as Michelangelo’s David and works as a swimming instructor. He lost his father early on and is losing himself. After a fight with his girlfriend, he meets Daniel, a handsome banker. Daniel chauffeurs him around in a sports car and takes him bungee-jumping from a bridge. Kafka sees light on the horizon because Daniel is the first person in a long time with whom he can be open. The love that Daniel gives to him, is unconditional, but it is accompanied by Kafka’s fears. He is raped by a street gang and has a cavity-search from a brutish customs agent. He can hardly permit himself to have sex with Daniel and when he sleeps with Daniel’s girlfriend, he is plagued by guilt. The long, difficult path leads Kafka to himself. AMPHET AMINE is, after PER MANENT RE SIDENCE , part two in an autobiographical trilogy from Scud.

Arias with a Twist

Joey Arias ennobled the performance art of being a drag queen. Arias is a personage who stood for the connection between the avant-garde and pop music as well as the revival of Billie Holiday’s divine voice. Joey was Andy Warhol’s muse. Klaus Nomi, David Bowie and Iggy Pop performed with Arias, who made a name for himself in Las Vegas as the »Mistress of Seduction«. »Arias with a Twist«, his show with puppeteer Basil Twist, is the focus of this film.

Beautiful Darling

Few shone as brightly in the 1960/70’s, as the transgender pioneer Candy Darling. Andy Warhol discovered her and cast her in his films; Lou Reed wrote two songs about her and Tennessee Williams wrote her a starring role in one of his plays. Interwoven with Candy’s story is the story of Candy’s dear friend Jeremiah Newton, who kept her belongings and her cremated remains in his New York City apartment for over thirty years, unable to say goodbye. BEAUTIFUL DARLING: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF CANDY DARLING, ANDY WARHO L SUPER STAR follows Jeremiah as he travels to finally bury Candy …

Blutsfreundschaft

Sixteen year old Axel has a problem at home and is kicked out of school. On the streets he meets a Neo-Nazi Gang. To get recognition, he has to go through dangerous rituals and humiliate people. When his new friends provoke him to murder, the situation explodes. After the attack, Axel hides out in a laundrette. The owner, Gustav Tritzinsky (Helmut Berger), an eighty year old homosexual, takes the youth in because the boy reminds him of his great love, whom he betrayed to the Gestapo during the Nazi-Era. Axel’s new gang is anything but understanding of the friendship that develops between the odd couple. Before his acting carrier, Kern was a member of the famous Wiener Knabenchor and later acted for directors like Fassbinder, Wenders, Zadek and others. In 1978 Kern founded his own film production company and has made many of his own films and documentaries since 1980.

Covered

2008, the opening of the first QUEER SARAJEVO FESTIVAL was closed down by a violent mob, that accused the organizers of blasphemy. Eight people were hospitalized, and the festival was cancelled. COVERED profiles the courage of the four women who organized the festival, and explores the complex politics that inform contemporary Bosnian society, still struggling with the demons of the war. John Greyson is a two time TE DDY AWARD winner (1989 and 2009).

Cuchillo de Palo

»Rodolfo was the only one of my many uncles who wasn’t a blacksmith like my grandfather. Rodolfo wanted to be a dancer.« This film takes up the hunt for clues about the life of Rodolfo, the Paraguayandirector’s uncle. Along the way, she finds out that Rodolfo’s name is on a list of 108 homosexuals that were imprisoned and tortured by General Stroessner’s dictatorial government in the 1980’s. »Rodolfo’s story unveils a piece of the deathly silent history of my country.« During the dictatorship and in the 15 year transitional period, 336 people disappeared, 20.000 were arbitrarily arrested, 18.000 tortured and at least 59 executed. Rodolfos dead body was found when the director was a child. When she asked her parents why he died they said, »From Sadness.«

Daniel Schmid

Daniel Schmid grew up as the child of a swiss hotel family in the village of Flims. It is surrounded by snow covered hills and visited by exotic guests from the world over. He already knew as a child that the world started behind Flimsstein Mountain, a world between Swiss reality and the longing for fiction. Using his imagination, given wings by the stories of his grandmother, he discovers the art of telling tall tales at an early age, using the hotel great hall as his stage. The film takes us on an overpowering cinematic journey with the people and to the places that Daniel Schmid has a connection to and into the film world of one of Switzerland’s most unusual directors.