WILD AT HEART: Rooms That Became Revolutions
Abschnitt Info
The TEDDY emerged from an intimate gathering of queer film festival workers at the Prinz Eisenherz bookshop, long before it became a defining presence within the Berlinale. To revisit those origins – and to understand how the award has helped queer Berlin’s cultural landscape, from the dance floors of SchwuZ and SO36 to the Metropol and the Haus der Kulturen der Welt – we speak with the people who were there at the inception, as well as those who have shaped the era of New Queer Cinema. The award’s formative years unfolded against a backdrop of political urgency: queer‑hostile legislation in West Berlin, the height of the AIDS crisis and the looming collapse of the Berlin Wall. Within this charged atmosphere, the TEDDY became more than an award; it became a cultural intervention. What did it mean for queer activists and filmmakers to see such a force – defiant, communal and unapologetically political – take root within the DNA of the Berlinale itself?
Date: Saturday, 14 February 2026
Ort: Deutsche Kinemathek - Museum für Film und Fernsehen I Mauerstraße 79, 10117 Berlin
Zeit: 11:00 am - 12:15 pm
Free admission
Moderation:
Toby Ashraf
Curator, Writer
Pronouns: he/him
Toby Ashraf works as a freelance curator and writer. He was awarded the Siegfried Kracauer Prize for Best Film Criticism and ran the Berlin Art Film Festival from 2014 to 2018. He has curated film programs for Goethe-Instituts and Deutsche Kinemathek and has published film reviews in taz – die Tageszeitung, Sissy magazine, and others.
He has been working as a presenter, author and editor for the Berlinale since 2014. In 2022, he was on the selection committee for the Berlinale Panorama and became Berlinale advisor in 2024 where he contributes to the entire official selection and specialises on German speaking and Queer Cinema.
@toby.ashraf
Panelist:
Elfi Mikesch
Cinematographer, photographer and film director
Pronouns: she/her
In 1971, she shot her first film as a cinematographer, Leidenschaften (Passions), the cinematic result of a trip around the world with Fritz Mikesch, directed by Rosa von Praunheim. In 1972, she was responsible for makeup and costumes for Werner Schroeter's Salome, for whom she worked as a cinematographer on numerous film productions. This was followed by further photo series and slide shows before she made a name for herself as a specialist in experimental films, which she directed herself, from around 1980 onwards. She also worked as a documentary filmmaker, including for ZDF, and was repeatedly hired as a cinematographer by directors such as Rosa von Praunheim, Werner Schroeter, Peter Lilienthal, and Monika Treut, with whom she founded the Hamburg-based production company Hyäne/Hyena Film in 1984.
In 1983/84, she taught directing at the German Film and Television Academy Berlin. She has been a member of the German Film Academy since 1991.
Together with Werner Schroeter, she was honored with the Murnau Film Prize in 2010, as a creator of deeply visual cinema, in which visible reality is complemented by invisible components, longing, and emotion. In 2014, she receives the Special Teddy Award.
On the occasion of Mikesch's 80th birthday in 2020, Rosa von Praunheim published the photo book vis-à-vis about his long-time companion, who worked as his camerawoman on over 20 films.
The Filmarchiv Austria honored Mikesch with a retrospective in 2022.
Raymond Phathanavirangoon
Film producer, programmer and festival advisor
Pronouns: he/him
Raymond Phathanavirangoon is a Hong Kong-born, Bangkok-based film producer who was Executive Director of Southeast Asia Fiction Film Lab (SEAFIC) which helped develop CU LI NEVER CRIES, PLAN 75 and STRANGER EYES that premiered in Berlin, Cannes and Venice, respectively. He was programmer for Toronto International Film Festival, Programme Consultant for Hong Kong International Film Festival and Delegate at Cannes Critics' Week. Prior, he was Director of Marketing & Special Projects for Fortissimo Films. He was advisory for Asian Film Awards and selection member for Hong Kong-Asia Film Financing Forum, Rotterdam Cinemart & TorinoFilmLab. Producing credits: Pang Ho-Cheung’s DREAM HOME (Tribeca 2010), Pen-ek Ratanaruang’s SAMUI SONG (Venice Days 2017) and HEADSHOT (Berlin Panorama 2012), Boo Junfeng's APPRENTICE (Cannes Un Certain Regard 2016) and SANDCASTLE (Cannes Critics’ Week 2010), Ron Howard’s THIRTEEN LIVES (2022), Patrick Dickinson’s COTTONTAIL (Rome Best First Feature 2023), more.
Sridhar Rangayan
Film Director, Producer, Festival Director, KASHISH Pride Film Festival
Pronouns: he/him
Sridhar Rangayan is the only Indian director, writer and producer consistently making LGBTQ+ focused content for the past 25 years. His award winning films The Pink Mirror, Yours Emotionally, 68 Pages, Purple Skies, Breaking Free, Evening Shadows, Raja Bro and Kuch Sapney Apne have helped kick start conversations around LGBTQ+ issues, and have catalyzed legal and social changes. His films have won 37 international awards including a National Award, and screened at over 250 film festivals. His films The Pink Mirror, Breaking Free and Evening Shadows have streamed on Netflix. He has been on international festival juries such as Berlinale, Iris Prize, MardiGras, Tasveer, Outfest, Movies That Matter, etc.
He is also the festival director of KASHISH Pride Film Festival, which has over the past 16 years emerged as South Asia’s biggest LGBTQ+ film festival. The festival is renowned for not only exhibiting films from across the world, but also for nurturing emerging Indian talent through its development and production grant, mentorship and distribution of Indian short films.
@sridharrangayan @kashishfilmfest
B. Ruby Rich
Film scholar, critic, curator and professor
Pronouns: she/her
B. Ruby Rich is a film scholar, critic, curator and professor emerita at University of California, Santa Cruz. She coined the term “New Queer Cinema” in a 1992 essay for the Village Voice and Sight and Sound, identifying a wave of radical queer films that she has continued to track ever since. Long a specialist in feminist, queer, Latin American, independent and documentary cinema, Rich is the author of Chick Flicks (1998) and New Queer Cinema: The Director’s Cut (2013) and served as editor-in-chief of the journal, Film Quarterly (2013-24). Rich has received many awards for her work, including Yale University's James Brudner Award for Outstanding LGBT Scholarship and the Frameline Award for a "major contribution to LGBT representation in film, television, and the media arts.” She is a member of AMPAS, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Wieland Speck
Filmmaker, Author, Curator
Pronouns: he/him
In 1981, Speck directed his first short film, David, Montgomery and I, which he presented at the Berlinale. One year later, he took on organisational and artistic management of the festival's Panorama section as assistant to programme director Manfred Salzgeber. In 1985, alongside his work at the Berlinale, Speck made his first feature film, Westler.
In 1987, together with Salzgeber, Speck initiated the Teddy Award, the Berlinale’s queer film prize and the first such award to be presented by an A-list festival worldwide. In 1992, Speck became Panorama's programme director and a member of the Berlinale competition selection committee. In this position, he was committed to queer cinema for 25 years and put his own artistic career on hold for most of it.
His film Escape to Life: The Erika and Klaus Mann Story, a docufiction film co-directed with Andrea Weiss, was released in 2000.
After stepping down from his position at the Berlinale, Speck remains dedicated to the festival as a consultant and curator of special programs.