Theatrum Mundi

The renowned Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin described Ulrike Ottinger as a ‘collector of worlds’ when it unveiled a major solo exhibition accompanying her latest film Paris Calligrammes in 2020. The cinematic autobiography celebrates its world premiere at the Berlinale. Born in Constance in southern Germany in 1942, the artist escapes the rigidities of the German Adenauer era of the 1950s at the age of 17 and moves to Paris, the city of artistic opportunities and sexual freedom.1 Paris Calligrammes traces Ulrike Ottinger's artistic beginnings, whose inspiration she finds in the cityscape, its architecture, its museums and public places, in the people who live there. It evokes the Paris of the illustrious circles of the Surrealists and Dadaists, but also serves as the setting for the political upheavals of the 1960s, including the Algerian War and the protests of May ’68, which laid bare Europe’s colonial legacy. The process of decolonisation profoundly shaped Ottinger’s later work, along with the influence of figures such as French playwright Jean Genet and ethnographic filmmaker Jean Rouch, a pioneer of Cinéma Vérité. ‘In France, the enthusiasts were also poets,’ she describes in an interview.2 Cultural historian Patricia White, who has been writing about Ottinger's films since the 1980s, describes her as a ‘dandy figure’3 whose complex oeuvre does not allow for simplistic categorisations: it is discussed both in the genealogy of feminist and lesbian film avant-garde, as well as that of auteur cinema or as part of an ethnographic debate in film. It is as expansive as it is focussing.

The ‘world theatre’ of Ulrike Ottinger

Now 82, Ottinger remains deeply engaged in filmmaking, even as retrospectives of her groundbreaking career continue to gain momentum. From Paris and London to New York, Stockholm, Warsaw and Toronto, the Goethe-Institut has brought Ulrike Ottinger’s work to audiences around the world, playing a key role in building her international reputation. Beginning on 6 December 2024, the Goethe-Institut Brussels and CINEMATEK will host a full cinematic retrospective of her legacy. Ulrike Ottinger’s artistic output extends far beyond film, encompassing theatre and opera productions, exhibitions, photography, painting, and artist book publications. As a filmmaker and camera woman, she has crafted both fictional films and sprawling documentaries, ranging from 12-hour real-time documentaries, such as Chamisso's Shadows (2016), to surreal short film fictions, such as Superbia (1989).

The concept of Theatrum Mundi, or world theatre, serves as a playful metaphor for global spectacle; for the small hustle and bustle of the big world; for the theatre within the theatre; or even a world spectacle at the fair. Theatrum Mundi also refers to Ottinger's monumental work Freak Orlando, a film she shot in 1981 as part of the Berlin Trilogy. Freak Orlando is a history spectacle of freaks and otherness. Orlando, the main character, inspired by Virginia Wolf's well-known non-binary character, appears in five episodes in different contemporaries in different genders, but in front of a constant setting: Berlin industrial landscapes. The Berlin trilogy is an example of Ottinger's long-standing collaborations with feminist idols, such as Tabea Blumenschein, a punk legend of Berlin’s underground, the feminist cult figure Delphine Seyrig or, a star of the alternative scene in Germany, Magdalena Montezuma. With films such as Madame X – An Absolute Ruler (1977), Ticket of No Return (1979) and Dorian Gray in the Mirror of the Yellow Press (1984) in particular, Ottinger and her “defiant muses”4 forged a bold, subversive path in the experimental German cinema of the 1980s. Ulrike Ottinger's contemporaries (and inspirations!) are almost all men. Her flamboyant and audacious oeuvre shines especially brightly today, standing apart from the male-dominated field of New German Cinema, shaped by directors like Werner Schroeter, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and Volker Schlöndorff.  

Contemporary and historical reception

The almost 5-hour film journey China. The Arts – The People (1985), which which was shot after the Berlin Trilogy, marks the beginning of Ottinger's award-winning documentary films. It was followed by films in Asia, such as Taiga (1991/92) or Exile Shanghai (1997), in Eastern Europe, such as Southeast Passage (2002), but German history was also documented, such as the fall of the Berlin Wall in Countdown (1990). Critical voices express concerns about exoticising depictions in her ethnographic and fictional works, such as Johanna d'Arc of Mongolia (1989). In particular fictional film characters, such as those in Madame X, show problematic representations for today's heated debates on identity politics. In a more in-depth analysis, however, Ottinger's work always provides answers to these critical voices itself. The filmmaker does not deny her privileged gaze and the plot twists of her narratives allow the viewer to become aware of their own perspective.5

In the line of this debate, Patricia White located the work in German Orientalism, in relation to Ottinger's practices of collecting, documenting and exhibiting - influenced by Dada, decolonial politics and lesbian feminism. ‘Her authorial persona shadows the role of the learned European traveller, remixes film history, queer cultural hierarchies and invites viewers to her cinematic Wunderkammer.’6

Theatrum Mundi - A Belgian retrospective

In spatial reflection of the Belgian CINEMATEK’s Wunderkammer (cabinet of curiosities), a companion exhibition explores select projects and creative processes from her career. To mark the occasion, the CINEMATEK has invited Ulrike Ottinger to curate a Carte Blanche - about 10 films that were important to her work and which will be shown in parallel. Ottinger's films have already been shown at renowned Belgian film festivals such as Film Fest Gent, Âge d'Or Festival or Pink Screens Festival and the Belgian CINEMATEK has several of Ottinger's original film materials in its archive.
The Goethe-Institut Brussels aimed to discuss this film-historical oeuvre in circles of young Belgian filmmakers and artists, as for instance with students from the Brussels Film and Theatre Academy RITCS and the Art Academy La Cambre or the queer-lesbian Brussels artist collective Office x Sexy Kesser Vater. A cabaret evening at Les Ateliers Claus will offer polyglot interpretations of Ottinger's film songs and the Belgian film platform Sabzian will situate Ottinger's work in theoretical discourses. The opening weekend of the retrospective will be celebrated in the presence of the artist herself, after which her films will be shown at CINEMATEK for three months.

Sources

[1] Ulrike Ottinger 2020 in an interview in the context of the Teddy Award, a renowned queer film price at the Berlinale: Teddy Award (22.02.2020) Interview with Ulrike Ottinger on 'Paris Calligrammes'
[2] Ulrike Ottinger at 80: In Conversation was published by the Goethe-Institut UK in 2022 and was directed by Mandy Maerck and Angela McRobbie.
[3] From ‘Ulrike Ottinger in the Mirror of Her Movies’ by Patricia White, in the recent publication ‘Film, Art and the Ethnographic Imagination’ edited in 2024 by Angela McRobbie.
[4] In 2023, the Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart is showing the group exhibition ‘Defiant Muses. Delphine Seyrig and the Feminist Video Collectives 1970s and 1980s France’ with works by Ulrike Ottinger and Chantal Ackerman, among others.
[5] As, for example, Patricia White elaborated in her 2022 contribution The Cosmos According to Ulrike Ottinger | Current | The Criterion Collection using the example of Johanna d'Arc of Mongolia, or Cassandra Xin Guan, who argues in ‘Ulrike Ottinger - Film, Art and the Ethnographic Imagination’ (2024): “Ottinger’s documentary eye sees the ethnographic subject not from the outside, but rather through a kind of view-within-a-view inscribed in the field of culture under observation. […] Instead of a transparent window opening onto another world, Ottinger’s China documentary, like a trick mirror, refracts rather than reflects the desire of the ethnographic subject.”
[6] Cf. Patricia White, 2024