Teddy @ 30...

1 Berlin Harlem – Germany (Federal Republic), 1974
By Lothar Lambert, Wolfram Zobus

Legendary film from super-indy filmmaker Lambert, one time most-featured Berlinale director, about the forms of racism in Berlin’s vibrant lifestyle at the time of the film's making. Brimming with cameos galore: alongside leading actor Conrad Jennings the likes of Ortrud Beginnen, Tally Brown, Ingrid Caven, Peter Chatel, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Günter Kaufmann, Dietmar Kracht, Evelyn Künneke, Lothar Lambert, Y Sa Lo, Bernd Lubowski, Brigitte Mira, Vera Müller can all be seen.

 

Anders als die Andern (Different from the Others) - Germany, 1919
By Richard Oswald

A significant world premiere: realised by the Outfest UCLA Legacy Project/UCLA Film & Television Archive, the newly-restored version of this cultural document of immeasurable value is screened for the first time – in a 35mm print, still the only reliable archive medium.

 

Before Stonewall – USA, 1984
By Greta Schiller, Robert Rosenberg
Info-Schau (former title of Panorama) 1985

The legendary film from Greta Schiller reveals a lot which is missing from Roland Emmerich's Stonewall - but nevertheless agrees with him in quite a few details. The world "before Stonewall", the beginning of the post-war gay rights movement: the German portrait of this dark Adenauer era in which homosexuals were transferred directly from concentration camps to West German correctional facilities and have not been rehabilitated is yet to come.
Greta Schiller later gained renown with Paris Was A Woman which she screened together with her partner and screenwriter Andrea Weiß in the 1996 Panorama.

 

Die Betörung der Blauen Matrosen (The Enchantment of the Blue Sailors) - Germany (Federal Republic), 1975
By Ulrike Ottinger

Ulrike Ottinger won the Special Teddy Award in 2014 for her incomparable lifetime achievement, of which this enchanting queer film is an early example even before her groundbreaking films Madame X and Bildnis einer Trinkerin (Ticket of No Return).

 

Die Wiese der Sachen (The Meadow of Things) - Germany (Federal Republic), 1974-1987
By Heinz Emigholz
Panorama / Teddy Award winner 1988

At a time when New German Cinema still appeared to be elusive, this artist and architect amongst West German filmmakers inspired with strikingly visual collages, associative streams and intellectual juxtapositions. An important work from an important German filmmaker.

 

Gendernauts - Eine Reise durch die Geschlechter (Gendernauts - A Journey Through Shifting Identities) - Germany, 1999
By Monika Treut
Panorama / Teddy Award winner 1999

One of the early researchers into the walled-in, gender-dualistic world of female and male, Monika Treut is at once a pioneer and veteran of Queer Cinema - an icon of the emancipation movement. She has screened numerous works in Panorama.

 

I Shot Andy Warhol – USA, 1996
By Mary Harron

The attempted assassination of Andy Warhol from the perspective of Factory member, artist, writer and publisher of the S.C.U.M. Manifesto Valerie Solanas. Mary Harron's debut film was produced by Christine Vachon who, with her Killer Films production company, has produced many works screened at the Berlinale and Teddy Award winners including all of Todd Haynes' films.

 

Je, tu, il, elle (I, You, He, She) - France / Belgium, 1974
By Chantal Akerman

In her boundary-breaking feature debut Chantal Akermann herself plays a young woman who seeks to address her experience of isolation through the study of other individuals. In tribute to Chantal Akerman, Panorama is screening two of her films: alongside Je, tu, il, elle, her Panorama film from 1983, Toute une nuit (A Whole Night).

 

Looking for Langston - United Kingdom, 1989
By Isaac Julien
Panorama / Teddy Award winner 1989

Now a star of the video art world, Isaac Julien has always first and foremost been a poetical activist, aesthete and cultural historian in the service of emancipation. This montage of archive material, dramatised scenes and literary texts creates an image of black gay identity exemplified by the life and work of Langston Hughes during the “Harlem Renaissance” in 1930s and 1940s New York City.

 

Machboim (Hide and Seek) – Israel, 1979
By Dan Wolman
Info-Schau (former title of Panorama) 1980

Today it is exactly the same as 36 years ago: love between Arabs and Jews is punished, hate and murder are accepted as normality. Dan Wolman casts a brave early look at this never-to-be-accepted situation.

 

Marble Ass – Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, 1995
By Želimir Žilnik
Panorama / Teddy Award winner 1995

Žilnik counters the homophobia and transphobia of Balkan societies which came to light years after the fall of the Berlin Wall with an early and anarchistic stand in what is still, to this day, one of the most extraordinary films to emerge from the entire region

 

Nitrate Kisses – USA, 1992
By Barbara Hammer
Forum 1993

A never seen in this way before, sensitively creative conquest of the female sexual realm, radically beyond the prescriptions of mainstream culture. Barbara Hammer has screened many of her works at the Berlinale.

 

The Watermelon Woman – USA, 1996
By Cheryl Dunye
Panorama / Teddy Award winner 1996

Racist tendencies might appear to have been expunged from emancipation and gender discourse – but this is far from being the case. The racism inherent in mainstream culture is not necessarily recognised as such by alternative thinkers. Dunye takes a stance with a reflection on a representative figure of this complex issue.

 

Tongues Untied – USA, 1989
By Marlon Riggs
Panorama / Teddy Award winner 1990

An early work of queer black emancipation from the then beacon of hope in the Afro-American gay rights movement – another artist and intellectual who died far too young from AIDS.

 

Toute une nuit (A Whole Night) - France / Belgium, 1982
By Chantal Akerman
Info-Schau (former title of Panorama) 1983

The director at the forefront of the post-war gender debate was already present in only the third year of the Info-Schau with this film. Virtuoso atmospheres between people and things, between spirit and world and time and space distinguish the work of this passionate artist who took her own life in October 2015. Panorama is screening two films in tribute to Chantal Akerman: alongside Toute une nuit, her debut from 1974, the radical Je, tu, il, elle (I, You, He, She).

 

Tras el cristal (In a Glass Cage) – Spain, 1987
By Agustí Vilaronga

A scandalous film at the time of making: an old Nazi and his young carer in Spain. A truly dark work about dark subject matters, the concealment and unrepentant nature of the post-fascist Spanish world when it had not yet begun to grapple analytically and politically with those grim times. In 2000 Vilaronga won the Manfred Salzgeber Prize with El Mar.