Berlinale’s Teddy Awards Celebrate 40 Years With Special Program

Berlin’s Teddy Awards have been celebrating queer films and artists since their inception 40 years ago, with past winners including Gus van Sant and Pedro Almodóvar. The initiative was not initially conceived as an award but rather a way of spotlighting LGBTQI+ films submitted across the festival. “For 10 years it was quite subcultural and we just organized it out of [Berlin strand] Panorama,” co-founder Wieland Speck says.

Within a few years, however, it had morphed into a bona fide awards event, complete with a cuddly teddy bear to take home (later replaced with a statue). The first award was handed out in 1987 to Almodóvar for Antonio Banderas-starrer “Law of Desire.” Back then, the LGBTQI+ landscape differed dramatically, particularly for filmmakers. “We had voices against us, but that’s normal: as a gay person, you’re used to that,” says Speck. “We were smart and arrogant enough to not care.”

Four decades later, the Teddy Awards are no longer part of the festival’s subculture but “inscribed into the DNA” of Berlinale itself, says Michael Stütz, the festival’s co-director of film programming. But the award is still bestowed upon any submission to the festival that the Teddy Award jury deem worthy rather than, in Stütz’s words, a separate “ghetto within the program.” And it continues to be coveted by filmmakers, because as well as honoring a film, it has the benefit of creating buzz around a project — particularly helpful for less commercial fare that might otherwise struggle to break through. “It creates news, it creates awareness about its existence,” says Saagar Gupta, a producer and artistic director of India’s Kashish Pride Film Festival, who is on this year’s Teddy jury.

The award can also help spotlight filmmakers from more conservative parts of the world who might struggle to promote their cinematic efforts back home. “I remember filmmakers from China smuggling out their cinema prints because they didn’t give into censorship,” says Stütz, while Speck cites films from India and Iran that have fallen foul of homophobic censors. In 2014, “Stories of Our Lives,” made by a Nairobi-based arts collective, was banned in Kenya before going on to win a Teddy Award. Speck recalls being in Kenya a few years later when another queer film, “Rafiki,” by Wanuri Kahiu, was banned by the country’s film classification board due to its “homosexual theme.”

Which is why Stütz, who is also head of the Panorama strand, and his team feel a duty of care to prospective honorees and will sometimes even ask them if they (and everyone listed in the credits) are comfortable with receiving a Teddy Award. “We had to make sure that we don’t endanger the life of those filmmakers,” he explains. Sometimes a filmmaker will change the credits on the film to protect their cast and crew.

Even in the West, Stütz says, there’s still a “huge need” for the spotlight of the Teddy Awards. “Especially in times like these, where globally we’re facing a backlash and spaces are becoming more narrow again.” Which is one of the reasons the festival is celebrating the 40th anniversary of the awards with a special program at the Zoo Palast and Deutschen Kinemathek (E Werk) at this year’s festival.

For Gupta, who says being on the jury is a “a big honor and responsibility,” the aim of the Teddy Awards is not just to celebrate LGBTQI+ films but highlight them for a wider audience. “Queer should not remain just as a category,” Gupta says. “It should become just one of many ways to read human stories in the years to come. That’s my hope.”

The Teddy Statue

At the inception of the Teddy Awards “we had real teddies to give away,” says co-founder Wieland Speck. As the award became more prominent, Speck & Co. decided winners should get a statue to put on their mantles. Cartoonist Ralf König designed the award, which was then cast in 3D. With its pear-shaped body and Yogi Bear-ish face, the statue resembles its more majestic counterpart, Berlinale’s Golden Bear, the highest prize awarded at the festival, but retains a counterculture sensibility. Why stick with a bear? “Because the teddy is, for most people on this planet, the first companion in bed. So everyone knows a teddy,” says Weiland.