German artist Ulrike Ottinger's cinematic work encompasses ethnography, history, and fantasy. “Watching her films is like traveling through an undiscovered country of marvels” (Village Voice).
Read full descriptionOttinger traces the paths of past explorers in a multipart exploration of the peoples, landscapes, and legends of the Bering Sea. This extraordinarily beautiful work is perhaps Ottinger’s magnum opus.
View DetailsOttinger voyages to Alaska and the Aleutian Islands in Part 1 of her epic documentary tracing the paths of past explorers through the Bering Sea region.
View DetailsThe second chapter in Ottinger’s Arctic exploration takes her to Chukotka in the Russian Far East.
View DetailsOttinger travels from Chukotka to the remote outpost of Wrangel Island as her journey continues.
View DetailsOttinger’s Bering Sea voyage concludes with the peninsula of Kamchatka and Bering Island.
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Fascinating and rich with wry humor, Exile Shanghai is an extraordinary cultural odyssey that affectionately conjures up the lost Jewish world of 1930s Shanghai.
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“Virginia Woolf meets the German camp underground in this extravaganza of performance art and oddity” (Jonathan Rosenbaum). Ottinger’s gender-bending, boundary-breaking fantasy of world history features Magdalena Montezuma, Delphine Seyrig, and Eddie Constantine.
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The epic adventure of seven Western women travelers on the Trans-Siberian Express who are ambushed by a band of Mongol horsewomen. “A rare and remarkable film. . . . Sumptuously stylized yet ardently observational” (New Yorker).
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Inspired by Virginia Woolf’s Orlando and featuring Tabea Blumenschein in multiple roles, Ottinger’s visually striking debut film is an allegory on themes of death, destruction, and resurrection. With short Superbia—The Pride.
View DetailsOttinger’s latest film describes her experiences as a young artist living in Paris in the 1960s, evoking a place and time of intellectual, artistic, and political ferment.
View DetailsOttinger’s award-winning documentary on the Prater amusement park in Vienna draws a parallel between the illusionary business of carnival freak shows and the bygone era of a cinema of attractions.
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Ottinger’s serenely beautiful, eight-hour ethnographic project Taiga is a study in epic time, a journey through northern Mongolia structured in ten parts. “Fascinating . . . a landmark in the West’s attempts to represent the East” (Cinemaya).
View DetailsDelphine Seyrig plays Dr. Mabuse, the unscrupulous president of a multinational press conglomerate scheming up a new plan for world domination, in Ottinger’s Langian exploration of media manipulation.
View DetailsA dive into Berlin’s seedy underside, courtesy of two women drinking themselves into oblivion. With appearances by Magdalena Montezuma, Nina Hagen, Eddie Constantine, and other cult stars.
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Ottinger’s glorious adaptation of a 1920s Ukrainian Soviet satire is both a picaresque post-revolutionary tale of avarice and a fascinating document of Ukraine circa 2004.
View DetailsThis personal portrait of the idiosyncratic German artist, filmmaker, and feminist traces her artistic development and offers insights into her singular body of work.
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In a film that is part documentary, part myth, Ottinger transports us to the Echigo region of northwestern Japan, where heavy snow blankets the landscape for more than half the year and distinctive ways of life have evolved.
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