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• On TV, she can be seen in the mini-series “Die Rebellin” (ZDF, 5.1., 7.1. and 11.1.2009), in which she plays Olga Schmitt, a radio technician who helps the main characters played by Alexandra Neldel and David Rott build affordable TV sets in postwar-Germany. (Watch an interview with her in which she talks about her role in the ZDF Mediathek – Making of, Part 6) Also in January, she has a guest appearance in the TV series “Türkisch für Anfänger” (ARD, 29.1.2009). And in February, Folkerts can first be seen as Lena Odenthal in a brand-new episode of “Tatort” and the very next day in the TV movie “Willkommen zu Hause” about a soldier who suffers from posstraumatic stress after returning home from a combat mission in Afghanistan.

Ulrike Folkerts (with Adnan Maral) in “Türkisch für Anfänger”

• Starting January 15th, Ulrike Folkerts can also be seen onstage in „Spurensuche“ (Ernst-Deutsch-Theater, Hamburg, 15.1.-21.2.2009) as the mother of a little boy who was murdered by a 16-year-old. In an attempt to deal with the situation, she gets in touch with the mother of the murderer, played by Suzanne von Borsody. The two women talked about their difficult roles in today’s issue of daily newspaper “Hamburger Abendblatt”.

Ulrike Folkerts and Suzanne von Borsody

(Pictures: ARD/Richard Hübner, www.ernst-deutsch-theater.de)

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Austria will get to know a lesbian angel, France takes action against the high suicide rate among gay teenagers, and the Dutch read about two lesbian women – here’s what’s going on in Europe.

Austria

AfterEllen.com reports that Austrian show Starmania – a reality TV show much like American Idol – debuts its fourth season Friday with openly lesbian/bi Bulgarian pop singer Lucy Diakovska among the show’s three judges.

Lucy Diakovska is best known as part of the once very successful German girl group No Angels, who – unfortunately – wasn’t very successful at this year’s Eurovision Song Contest when they came in last. To learn more about her (and see some glamorous pics) go to AfterEllen.com.

Germany

• Last Saturday Miriam Meckel, TV host, university professor and book author, and her partner, popular talk show host Anne Will, attended the awards ceremony for the “Deutschen Fernsehpreis”, a German TV awards show, together. Meckel was a member of the jury, which also included out TV host Bettina Böttinger. Meckel and Will came out as a couple last November, an event that had long been awaited by German lesbians and that was comprehensively reported about in the press and even by AfterEllen.com. To see pictures of the couple on the Red Carpet, you can go to Gettyimages.com.

• If you live in Hamburg or the Northern part of Germany or happen to visit the area next week, you might want to check out the program of Hamburg’s gay and lesbian film festival. From Oct. 20th to Oct. 26th, a broad variety of both gay- and lesbian-themed movies will be shown in four different cinemas. Among the over 100 movies are documentaries, feature films and short films from all over the world, like British movie Affinity, a movie based on yet another Sarah Waters novel, German movie Mein Freund aus Faro, about a young woman who falls in love with another woman who mistakes her for a boy from Portugal, and French movie Water Lilies, about two women from a synchronized swimming team who become lovers. The program also includes 2007 Academy Award Winner Freeheld, Puccini for Beginners and Drifting Flowers from Taiwan.

France

• This is not specifically lesbian news, but still noteworthy: Young, gay and what people think is the subject of a contest organized by French health minister Roselyne Bachelot together with scientists, artists and the media. Famous director André Téchiné (“My Favourite Season”, “Changing Times”, both starring Catherine Deneuve) serves as president of the jury.
  The main goals of the contest are to change the representation of homosexuality in the society, enhance dialogue and make people think about the consequences of homophobia, resulting, for example, in an alarming number of suicides among French teenagers that’s estimated to be about 7 times higher than the risk for straight teenager.
  Participants can deliver a storyline, 4 of which will be made into short movies and aired on the channels of the Canal+ group. If you want to know more, you can visit the official website of the contest: www.leregarddesautres.fr

• Starting today, French TV channel “Téva” airs short-lived US TV show “Cashmere Mafia” about four ambitious and successful business women in New York who have been best friends since business school. One of them, Caitlin, falls in love with another woman. You can learn more about the show on AfterEllen.com.

Netherlands

As part of the campaign Nederland Leest (The Netherlands read) that starts on Oct. 17th and runs through November 14th, Dutch libraries and schools will give away the novel “Twee Vrouwen” (“Two Women”) by Harry Mulisch, one of Holland’s most famous writers, to its members and students. There is also a special priced new edition in bookstores. “Twee Vrouwen” is about the lesbian relationship between Laura, a divorced woman who has never been with another woman before, and Sylvia, who she picks up on the street one day. The book was first released in 1975 and – of course – caused quite a stir back then. It was also made into a movie in 1979.
To learn more about the campaign, you can go to their official website. There’s an English review about the book on Complete-Review.com, and information on the movie is available on IMDB.

If you think that there’s something missing from this column that we should have written about, it’s very likely that we just didn’t know about it. To prevent this from happening again, please help us and let us know what’s going on in your country that you think should be reported about in this column. You can either send us a private message via this website or an e-mail to entertainment@eurout.org.

(Posted on eurOut on Oct. 16th, 2008)

Sweden:

• Out lesbian writer and journalist Mian Lodalen was interviewed on a Swedish morning show about her new book Dårens Dotter (”The fool’s daughter”) that was reviewed by BlackBox earlier this month. You can watch the video (in Swedish, obviously) here.

• Out bisexual contestant Yaiya made it to the final auditions of this year’s edition of the Swedish Idol show. The final auditions start this week, let’s see whether there’s a chance of getting another openly gay or bisexual Idol in Europe after out singer Elli won the German idol in 2004. You can watch a video of Yaiya’s audition here. She also has a myspace site and a blog in English, and there was a short interview with her in the September issue of QX, a Swedish gay magazine which you can download from the official website.

Germany:

• German TV personality Ramona Leiß, who hosted some well-known TV shows like ZDF Fernsehgarten and Knoff-Hoff-Show in the 1980s and 1990s and who’s currently a guest star in the German soap opera “Sturm der Liebe”, has announced that she plans to marry her girlfriend next year. For those of you who might have missed it, Leiß came out in an interview with the German newspaper Bild am Sonntag last May, outing not only herself but also the late songwriter Hanne Haller who she said she was in a relationship with for 4 years in the 1980s.

• If you’re a fan of Better Than Chocolate’s Christina Cox and also happen to like Buffy the Vampire Slayer (or vice versa), you might be interested in watching the show Blood Ties that starts on RTL II on October 28th. The show is based on books by out lesbian writer Tanya Huff and stars Cox as a female, supposedly bisexual (although there are no hints to that in the first episode) detective. A German review of the show can be found here, and there’s also a review on AfterEllen.

Go here to read our Chief Editor Sandra’s take on Ramona Leiß, Blood Ties and the visibility of Lesbians in the German media.

France:

• French TV viewers were able to witness some lesbian drama this summer on the show Secret Story, which is a reality TV show a little like Big Brother, about people who are locked up in a house and who are all trying to hide a secret from their housemates. Two of them, Nathalie and Samantha from Belgium, hid the fact that they were a couple, but they were soon outed. When Nathalie had to leave the house for health reasons, Samantha got a little too interested in her housemate Marilyn and the lesbian drama unfolded. There were catfights, a breakup and a reconciliation live on TV. You can read a more in-depth and also very funny description of what happened in AfterEllen’s September 12th issue of Best.Lesbian.Week.Ever.

UK:

• Lesbian rapper MZ Fontaine won the “Black LGBT community award” as Woman of the Year. The awards ceremony was held on September 20th in London.

(Posted on eurOut on September 25th, 2008)