Ulrike Ottinger

Ulrike Ottinger has been a unique and provocative voice in German cinema since her debut in the early 1970s. Born in 1942, she began her career as a painter in Paris, and was widely exhibited in Europe before returning to Germany, where she directed her first film in 1971. Since 1973, she has lived in Berlin.

Over the past 20 years, Ulrike Ottinger has directed 15 films, including feature-length fictions and experimental documentaries.

Her early fiction films explore Berlin's many subcultures and diverse populations. MADAME X (1977), a campy, feminist pirate movie, stars underground icon Tabea Blumschein as a spike-fisted, leather-clad dominatrix captain. In TICKET OF NO RETURN (1979), Blumenschein plays a glamorous drunkard who wanders through Berlin's nightlife, accompanied by a bag lady. Her later films include THE IMAGE OF DORIAN GRAY IN THE YELLOW PRESS (1983), in which Oscar Wilde's famous character is played by a woman (actress and model Veruschka von Lehndorff), and JOHANNA D'ARC OF MONGOLIA (1989), in which people travelling on the elegant Trans-Siberian Express suddenly encounter native Mongolian culture.

Ulrike Ottinger uses splendidly original visual effects to explore her fascination with unusual aspects of contemporary culture, whether she is migrating with Mongolian nomads across the vast valleys of the Taiga forest (TAGIA, 1992), or crossing, with her compatriots, the newly fallen border between East and West Berlin (COUNTDOWN, 1990). "Her work is posed against the increasing homogenization of modern living: playfulness, irony, and wonder are her tools. She speaks to our hidden desires for fabulous visions of worlds that are eccentric and strange." (Leslie Cami, The Village Voice).

Ottinger achieves her enthralling visual effects through innovative and expressionistic use of costuming, composition, and unusual settings. A versatile talent, she assumes many of the creative and administrative functions on her own films; beyond directing, her credits include that of screenwriter, producer, cinematographer, and set designer. She has also worked as a theatre director and ethnographer; her photographs have been exhibited in numerous venues, and she has published several books.

She has worked with both international actors (Delphine Seyrig, Eddie Constantine, and Nina Hagen), and leading names in German underground cinema (Fassbinder regulars Irm Hermann, Kurt Raab, and Magdalena Montezuma) as well as with amateurs. Her films have been screened at festivals and in movie theatres around the world to great popular and critical acclaim. She is one of a handful of women directors in Europe to have achieved international stature.

"Ulrike Ottinger works the margins which put her on the cutting edge. The multiculturalism of her films is the kind that shoots up every identity, sexual or otherwise, with a megadose of difference. There is no other filmmaker." (Laurence Rickels, Artforum, 1993).


FILMOGRAPHY

1972-73 Loakoon & Sohne (Loacoon & Sons)

1973 Berlinfieber (Berlin Fever)

1975 Die Betorung der Blauen Matrosen (The Enchantment of the Blue Sailors)

1977 Madame X – Eine Absolute Herrscherin (Madame X – An Absolute Ruler)

1979 Bildnis Einer Trinkerin-Aller Jamais Retour (Ticket of No Return)

1981 Freak Orlando

1983-84 Dorian Gray im Spiegel der Boulevardpresse
(The Image of Dorian Gray in the Yellow Press)

1985 China-die Kunste-Der Alltag (China-the Arts- Everyday Life)

1986 Superbia-Stolz (Superbia-Pride)

1987 Usinimage

1988-89 Johanna d’Arc of Mongolia

1989 Countdown

1993 Taiga

1997 Exile Shanghai

Countdown
A film by Ulrike Ottinger, 1991, 189 min., Color
From one of Berlin’s leading directors comes COUNTDOWN, a fascinating chronicle of the divided Germany’s final days. Ulrike Ottinger’s documentary sh...

The Image of Dorian Gray in the Yellow Press
A film by Ulrike Ottinger, 1984, 150 min., Color
"In the poses of the dandy and the manufactured excesses of the tabloid press, Ottinger finds connections between our 'fin de siecle' moment and the l...

Johanna d'Arc of Mongolia
A film by Ulrike Ottinger, 1989, 165 min., Color
Ulrike Ottinger's epic adventure traces a fantastic encounter between two different worlds. Seven western women travelers meet aboard the sumptuous, m...

Madame X: An Absolute Ruler
A film by Ulrike Ottinger, 1977, 141 min., Color
"Ulrike Ottinger has a larger body of work than almost any other lesbian filmmaker, and her rarely seen first feature contains most of the elements th...

Ticket of No Return
A film by Ulrike Ottinger, 1979, 108 min., Color
A portrait of two unusual but also extremely different women. One rich, eccentric, hiding her feelings behind a rigid mask, consciously drinks hersel...