Julian Hernandez has won his second Best Feature Teddy award at the 59th Annual Berlin
International Film Festival, also known as Berlinale. The festival,
the third largest, ended Sunday.
The Teddys recognize the best gay and
lesbian cinema at the festival.
The Mexican director won his first
Teddy with his 2003 debut film, A Thousand Clouds Encircle the
Sky, Love, You Will Never Stop Being Loved, which
depicted a young gay Mexican man's longing for love.
Hernandez's Raging
Sun, Raging Sky (Rabioso Sol, Rabioso Cielo) faced off
against another Latin American entry, Lucia Puenzo's The Fish
Child (El Nino Pez), and Kit Hung's Soundless Wind
Chime (Wu Sheng Feng Ling).
Raging Sun,
Raging Sky places the love shared between Kieri and Ryo, two gay
men, at the center of a mythical battle that ends when the pair
reunite after inevitable loss. It offers a bold vision of an
infinite love that knows no bounds.
“We award the
Teddy for best feature to the Mexican film Raging Sun, Raging Sky
for its masterful cinematography and its visionary use of color and
sound – for its explorations of love, desire and sexuality within
the framework of ancient mythology, juxtaposed with modern urbanity,”
the jury said in a statement.
American audiences
might be more familiar with Hernandez's 2006 film Broken Sky,
which was distributed by Strand Releasing and was also nominated for
a Best Feature Teddy.
Canadian director
John Greyson took home a Teddy for the Best Documentary/Essay Film.
Greyson's Fig
Trees is an experimental film that documents the struggle for
AIDS patients in South Africa to gain needed access to treatment.
The film blends actual footage of AIDS activist Zackie Achmat's 1999
treatment strike, where he refused medicine until it became available
to all in his country, with singing actors against a backdrop of an
opera and is narrated by an albino squirrel.
“This festival
champions two things I feel strongly about: queer content and
experimental form,” Greyson told The Globe and Mail.
Joe Dallesandro,
the hunky sex kitten made famous in countless camp films by Andy
Warhol in the 1960s and 70s, was honored with a special lifetime
achievement Teddy.
The Berlinale also
screened two films featuring Dallesandro: Little Joe,
director Nicole Haeusser's new documentary on the hustler turned pop
icon, and Tapage Nocture, Catherine Breillat's 1979 take on
the subject.
The Teddy awards
were handed out at a February 13 ceremony.
Gay Entertainment
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