With today’s launch of the TEDDY poster, the countdown has begun towards the 28th TEDDY AWARD taking place in the framework of the 64th Berlin International Film Festival from 6 to 16 February 2014. The 28th TEDDY AWARD will climax on 14 February 2014 with a glittering awards ceremony at the Komische Oper Berlin. The Franco-German TV station ARTE will broadcast the TEDDY Gala for a 9th successive year.

The artwork for the 28th TEDDY AWARD is taken – as it was last year – from the portrait series Golden Queers by Berlin-based artist Rinaldo Hopf. Under the banner Celebrate Queer Icons, the TEDDY AWARD will once again recall the life and work of exceptional queer individuals. The aim is to commemorate talented queers who sought both to push back the frontiers of art and to live (or sometimes only to survive) as gay men, lesbians, bisexual men and women or as trans* in ‘normal’ society.

The design of this year’s TEDDY AWARD focuses on the avant-garde Berlin artist, dancer, cabaret performer and actress Valeska Gert (1892-1978). In the 1920s and 1930s she was a well-known figure far beyond her native city of Berlin. In everything she did, she was unstintingly modern and artistically uninhibited. Sexual, geographical and societal boundaries were there to be transgressed. Valeska Gert was an artist of exceptional modernity. Her avant-garde solo dance performances were well ahead of their time and influenced the decades that followed.

Tickets for the TEDDY AWARD Gala in the Komische Oper Berlin, February 14th, 2014 are available from now on in the Online Shop at www.teddyaward.tv. Ticket reservation is possible via e-mail at tickets@papagena.de or on the telephone via the Ticket Hotline 030 – 4799 7447 and at the Ticket Office of the Komische Oper Berlin. Without booking fee the tickets are available at Prinz Eisenherz Bookshop, Motzstraße 23, 10777 Berlin