Ulrike Ottinger

Ulrike Ottinger (1942) is a German pioneering filmmaker and artist. After studying painting and printmaking in Paris in the 1960s, she transitioned to filmmaking in the 1970s, gaining recognition with her influential “Berlin trilogy” of fiction films – Bildnis einer Trinkerin (1979), Freak Orlando (1981), and Dorian Gray im Spiegel der Boulevardpresse (1984) – which earned her the title “queen of Berlin’s underground.” Her early work featured collaborations with iconic actors and figures from the New German Cinema scene. Ottinger’s films are extreme, eccentric, and unapologetically flamboyant, combining opulent kitsch with a libertarian message tinged with feminist overtones and set against a backdrop of transgression. In the late 1980s, Ottinger shifted her focus to ethnographic documentaries, resulting in a series of expansive films that explore exoticism as a lens through which to encounter the “other.” These travelogues were filmed in the Far East (China. Die Künste – der Alltag (1985), The Korean Wedding Chest (2009), Unter Schnee (2011)), on Bering Island (Chamissos Schatten (2016)), in Germany (Countdown (1990)), and in Eastern Europe (Südostpassage (2002)), the latter offering a poignant testimony to the terror endured by the marginalised in the aftermath of the Cold War. More recently, she directed Paris Calligrammes, a film reflecting on her youth in the French capital, where she roamed galleries, attended happenings of the 1960s, and mingled with figures such as Jean-Luc Godard, William Klein, Bulle Ogier, and Delphine Seyrig.