John Greyson wins Teddy Award

John Greyson, co-founder of the Future Cinema Lab and Professor in the Department of Film at York University, has won a Best Documentary/Essay Teddy Award at the 2009 Berlinale (Berlin International Film Festival) for the film Fig Trees. Greyson previously won the Teddy Award for Urinal (1989, Best Documentary); The Making of Monsters (1991, Jury Award); and Uncut (1998, Special Award).

From the Berlinale’s website: “The Teddy Awards go to films that have a gay and/or lesbian context. The nine members of this international jury – for the most part, organizers of gay and lesbian film festivals – view films screened in all sections of the Festival. Chosen from a list of films selected by the jury, a 3,000-Euro Teddy is awarded to a feature film, a short film and a documentary. The Teddy Jury at the Berlinale 2009: Stephen Kent Jusick, Justine Barda, Cosimo Santoro, Manny de Guerre, Mercedes Martín, Emina Trumic, Rudi Fürstberger, Kyle Stephan.”

Jury statement: “With his familiar cheeky style, Greyson’s operatic tour de force smashes conventional barriers of form and genre to reinvent the documentary. Integrating personal histories with an indictment of governments and pharmaceutical companies, Fig Trees colorfully expands the conversation about AIDS and AIDS activism from local struggles to global collaboration.”

The Teddy Award winners:

Feature film
Rabioso sol, rabioso cielo (Raging Sun, Raging Sky)
by Julián Hernández

Best essay
Fig Trees
by John Greyson

Short film
A Horse Is Not A Metaphor
by Barbara Hammer

Siegessäule reader award
City of Borders
by Yun Suh

Special awards
Joe Dallesandro
John Hurt

More on Prizes of the Independent Juries at Berlinale
Webcast of the 23rd Teddy Award ceremony

The Future Cinema Lab is supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Canada Research Chairs, York Research, Ontario Innovation Trust, and the Canada Foundation for Innovation. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.