Pride Month at DFF

During the month of June, known as Pride Month, the DFF cinema presents a varied selection of films that showcase stories from the LGBTIQA+ community, featuring drag queens, queer families, and the exploration of sexual self-determination. Additionally, the DFF offers an array of engaging content, including the special exhibition WEIMAR WEIBLICH, podcasts, videos, and other contributions, all aimed at providing diverse perspectives on queer subjects beyond the confines of the cinema screen.

Events

Wednesday, June 14th
MÄDCHEN IN UNIFORM
Film & Conversation

This classic of early German sound film, now revered as a lesbian cult film, features an all-female cast and two women in key roles: Christa Winsloe wrote the screenplay for MÄDCHEN IN UNIFORM (DE 1931) and Leontine Sagan directed. After the screening, film scholars Karola Gramann and Heide Schlüpmann will talk about the history of the film’s reception, it’s significance for a lesbian audience, and about a wonderful interview they conducted with lead actress Hertha Thiele in the early 1980s. Read more…

Friday, June 16th
Special: Queer Motherhood
Film & Lecture

Hans Tintner’s silent film CYANKALI (DE 1930), already equipped with some sound sequences, is a socially critical manifesto against the abortion paragraph 218, which was still in force at the time, and an impressive example of the proletarian film of the Weimar Republic. Berlin-based artist annette hollywood will give a lecture on her project [anderkawer], which examines the situation of non-heteronormative families in Germany since the 1920s. Read more…

Friday, June 16th
Special: Turkish Film Festival
Film & Talk (Zoom)

Emin Alper has established himself as one of the most incisive voices in contemporary world cinema. His political thriller KURAK GÜNLER (Burning Days, Turkey 2022) is a particularly timely film in which homophobia is treated as a kind of state policy. After being nominated for the Queer Palm Award in Cannes, the Turkish Ministry of Culture withdrew its financial support for the film, including interest. Director Emin Alper will join us via zoom after the screening. Read more…

Friday, June 23rd
MUTTER MUTTER KIND
Film & Conversation

At a time when the image of the family consists of mother, father and child, Pedi and Anny have three sons with Eike as a sperm donor. In her documentary MOTHER MOTHER CHILD: LET’S DO THIS DIFFERENT, filmmaker Annette Ernst follows the lesbian couple for 13 years. The film observes sensitively without losing sight of the social context. The screening is followed by a conversation with the filmmaker. Read more…

Film Series

Friday, June 2nd through Friday, June 23rd
WEIMAR WEIBLICH
Film Series Accompanying the Exhibition

With “WEIMAR WEIBLICH. Women and Gender Diversity in Weimar Cinema (1918-1933)”, the DFF presents an exhibition on women in front of and behind the camera in Weimar cinema until November 12. During Pride Month in June, the accompanying program at the DFF cinema is dedicated to films that advocate physical and sexual self-determination. To the film series…

Friday, June 2nd through Tuesday June 20th
John Waters and Kenneth Anger
Queer Cult Movies

Subversive, anarchic, grotesque: During Pride Month in June, the Cult Movies series at the DFF features the radical queer aesthetics of John Waters and the recently deceased Kenneth Anger with two double programs. To the film series…

More Queer Content

Exhibition
WEIMAR WEIBLICH. Women and Gender Diversity in Weimar Cinema (1918-1933)

The exhibition (through November 12, 2023) sheds light on the women in all professions who helped the nascent film industry flourish. One of the central questions is how the cinema of the Weimar era negotiated gender issues, addressing topics such as bodily self-determination, cross-dressing, and homosexuality. Read more…

Lecture
2001: A QUEER FUTURE 

Will the future be gender-fluid, that is, shaped by the unspecific, changing gender? In this 2018 lecture, cultural historian Dominic Janes highlighted that “2001” can also be read as a queer odyssey. Watch lecture (in English)…

Podcast
On Richard Oswalds  Gay Melodram ANDERS ALS DIE ANDERN (Different from the Others)

Richard Oswald’s ANDERS ALS DIE ANDERN (DE 1919) was the first movie to address homosexuality and the gay Paragraph 175. In a podcast discussion with Frauke Haß, film scholar Wolfgang Theis describes how the enlightening film starring Conrad Veidt was a box office hit, but also the target of homophobic attacks. Listen to the podcast (in german) ….

Focus RHIZOM Filmgeschichte
QUEER CINEMA 

The platform RHIZOM FILMGESCHICHTE gathers around 200 film beginnings and can be explored online as well as at a station in the museum foyer. In the thematic path QUEER CINEMA – Counter-Narratives and Cinematic Experiments, Karin Michalski writes about an explicitly political phenomenon that does not orient itself on firmly defined identities, but rather subverts, confuses, and expands normative social concepts of identity. More (in german)…

Film Blog
Mae West: Ein Star, wie es keinen zuvor gegeben hat

“When I’m good, I’m very, very good, but when I’m bad, I’m better.” For good reason, Mae West has always been an idol for many gay men. Her overemphasis on feminine charms and behavior has always ironized social and moral attitudes toward sex, not least in the way she reminds us of homosexual male actors. Winfried Günther writes about her career on the Filmblog. Read more (in german)…

Film Talk
LADYBITCH

Paula Knüpling and Marina Prados realize queer, feminist and diverse films with their joint production company. Their debut film LADYBITCH (DE 2022) tells the story of Ela, a young and inexperienced actress from Berlin, who finds herself in a supposedly feminist theater production in which her female perspective on the role is lost. The situation escalates when she is sexually harassed by Kramer. Watch the conversation (in german)…