Berlin’s Golden Bear has a gay friend called Teddy

BERLIN - The Berlin Film Festival’s renowned Golden Bear Award has a gay friend called the Teddy Award which is quickly becoming well-respected in its own right.

Now in its 24th year, the Teddy Award honours excellence in gay filmmaking. The only gay film award associated with a major “A-list” film festival, Teddy’s previous winners have included Pedro Almodovar, Gus van Sant, Derek Jarman, Helmut Berger, Joe Dallesandro, John Hurt and Tilda Swinton.

The Berlin Film Fest has been a gay-friendly event for decades. As early as in 1980 festival director Moritz de Hadeln gave tacit approval to the festival’s selection panels to showcase homosexual-theme filmmaking from around the world.

In the 1980s, the Berlin fest became well-known as the gayest festival outside the English-speaking world. Van Sant’s “My Private Idaho” was screened in Berlin when the director was far from well-known in Hollywood.

When the Cuban gay-theme film “Fresa y Chocolate” (Strawberry and Chocolate) was screened in Berlin in 1994, it was totally unknown outside of Latin America. The exposure it received in Berlin propelled it to awards around the world and an Oscar nomination as best foreign-language film.

“We’ve never doubted the need for the Teddy Award,” says German filmmaker Wieland Speck, one of the veteran organisers of both the Berlin Film Festival and the parallel Teddy Awards. There is no separate gay film category in Berlin. Any and all films on view at the festival are eligible for the Teddy.

“The Teddy is more important than ever,” Speck says, despite the fact that gays and lesbians have made political strides in many countries. In Germany, the foreign minister is openly homosexual, and the mayors of the nation’s two largest cities - Berlin and Hamburg - are gay.

“Some people cynically suggest there is no longer any need for the Teddy now that Berlin has a gay mayor,” Speck said. “But despite all the gains, the overall political situation has not changed in principle.”

The Berlin fest sees itself as a bridge between east and west and also a bridge between Hollywood and independent cinema around the world.

“Straight males are still the ruling power on this planet and indeed they are so in every nation,” Speck points out. “And straight men feel extremely threatened by men who are different.”

He says the Teddy award will be topical as long as homosexuality is banned in countries such as Saudi Arabia and Iran, where prison or even death are the maximum penalties for homosexuality.

“The situation in Nigeria shows that the Teddy Award is more timely than ever,” he says.