In the coming months, CINEMATEK, in collaboration with the Goethe-Institut and Sabzian, will present an (almost) complete retrospective of Ulrike Ottinger’s oeuvre – a rare event, as her films have been seldom shown in Belgium over the past half-century. The opening of the retrospective will be celebrated on 6 December in the presence of the artist herself. A companion exhibition set up at CINEMATEK explores select projects and creative processes from her career.
Born in Germany in 1942, Ottinger grew up on the shores of Lake Constance. She moved to Paris in the early 1960s, where she began painting and learning printmaking techniques. Her paintings were inspired by pop art and carried a strong political undertone. Returning to Germany in the early 1970s, her interest in painting, photography, and performance art led her to filmmaking. In 1979, she settled in Berlin, where she directed Bildnis einer Trinkerin (1979), Freak Orlando (1981), and Dorian Gray im Spiegel der Boulevardpresse (1984). This “Berlin trilogy” marked the beginning of a series of fiction films that earned her the title of “queen of Berlin’s underground.” At the time, alongside Rosa von Praunheim, she was one of the most marginalised filmmakers of the New German Cinema movement.
For her early films, she surrounded herself with friends, many of whom were internationally renowned actors (such as Delphine Seyrig, Eddie Constantine, and Nina Hagen), as well as collaborators favoured by Fassbinder (Irm Hermann, Kurt Raab) or Werner Schroeter (Magdalena Montezuma). However, her primary muse was Tabea Blumenschein, a true icon of Berlin’s punk underground.
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.
As the director and producer of some 26 films – both fiction and documentary – Ulrike Ottinger stands as a towering figure of post-war German cinema. Although her work has been celebrated at major festivals, adorned with prestigious awards, and praised by critics worldwide, she remains underappreciated due to the limited distribution of her films.