Events

In collaboration with the Goethe-Institut New York, Anthology Film Archives is presenting films by the great filmmaker Ulrike Ottinger, who will be at Anthology Film Archives in person on October 11 and October 12, as part of a mini-retrospective celebrating her wild, flamboyant, and breathtakingly varied body of work. Along with several of her greatest films, the series will feature the New York City premiere of her most recent feature film, The Korean Wedding Chest.

“Deliriously sumptuous and transgressive, Ulrike Ottinger’s world can hardly be confused with humdrum reality. Watching her films is like traveling through an undiscovered country of marvels, a journey alternately dazzling, infuriating, hilarious, and rewarding. Mongolian nomads, feral feminists, and Shanghai and Jewish culture rub elbows in [the oeuvre] of a unique filmmaker who combines an outlaw’s spirit and an ethnographer’s eye with an artist’s sense of wonder.” –Leslie Camhi, The Village Voice 

October 9, 7:30 pm; October 11, 7:30 pm: 
Joan of Arc of Mongolia. 1989. With Delphine Seyrig and Irm Hermann. 165 min. 
“[Delphine Seyrig is] a cultivated lady anthropologist traveling on the Trans-Siberian railroad, where her companions include a renowned Yiddish tenor (Micky Katz), a German schoolteacher (Fassbinder regular Irm Hermann), a campy all-girl klezmer trio, and a young girl in search of adventure. When, mid-steppe, the train is halted by Mongolian tribeswomen on ponies who kidnap the female passengers, the journey assumes a new dimension. Visually splendid and emotionally resonant, with knock-out musical numbers, this is both a lesbian epic and a love story between a filmmaker and her medium.” –Leslie Camhi, The Village Voice

October 10, 3:30 pm; October 14, 6:30 pm: 
The Image of Dorian Gray in the Yellow Press. 1984. With Verushka von Lehndorff, Delphine Seyrig, Tabea Blumenschein, Irm Hermann, and Magdalena Montezuma. 150 min.
Dorian Gray, young, rich, handsome, and above all narcissistic, wiles away his days attending lectures, art exhibits, and charity dinners. His life is lived out of the public eye until the cynical head of a media conglomerate decides to turn him into a celebrity in an unscrupulous ploy to boost newspaper sales. Dorian soon forgets his noble pursuits as he becomes front-page news around the world. But can Dorian handle the power of celebrity or will it destroy him?

October 10, 6:30 pm; October 12, 9:15 pm:
Ticket of No Return. 1979. With Tabea Blumenschein, Magdalena Montezuma, Nina Hagen, and Eddie Constantine. 108 min.  
A portrait of two unusual but also extremely different women. One rich, eccentric, hiding her feelings behind a rigid mask, consciously drinks herself to death. The other is a known drinker in town. In the course of the story they try to get to know each other, but they cannot come together. The background is Berlin, thrown open to a grotesque kind of sightseeing (drinkers’ geography) and complemented by authentic contributions from people who live there or are visiting – rock singers, writers, artists, taxi drivers.

October 10, 9:00 pm; October 14, 9:30 pm:
Freak Orlando. 1981. With Magdalena Montezuma, Delphine Seyrig, and Eddie Constantine. 126 min.  
“Virginia Woolf meets the German camp underground in this extravaganza of performance art and oddity by Ottinger. Actually, the political focus is closer to that of Tod Browning’s Freaks than to Woolf’s Orlando, though Ottinger has taken from Woolf the notion of ‘an ideal protagonist [who] represents all the social possibilities – man and woman – which we normally do not have.’ The five episodes situate the hero/heroine in the Freak City department store (along with her seven dwarf shoemakers), in the Middle Ages, toward the end of the Spanish Inquisition, in a circus (where he falls in love with Delphine Seyrig, one of a pair of Siamese twins), and on a grand European tour with four bunnies (during which she appears at an annual festival of ugliness).” –Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader

October 11, 4:15 pm:
Madame X: An Absolute Ruler. 1988. With Tabea Blumenschein and Yvonne Rainer. 147 min.
Madame X, a harsh, pitiless beauty, the cruel uncrowned ruler of the China Sea, launches an appeal to all women willing to exchange their comfortable and secure but unbearably dull lives for a world of dangers and uncertainties, free from rules and patriarchal tyranny. A variety of women respond to her call, but they soon find themselves swapping one kind of servitude for another, as Madame X demands complete devotion from her shipmates, even the ones she is enamored with. Madame X subverts traditional modes of narrative cinema to create a challenging and allegorical tale of female empowerment.

October 12, 7:00 pm:
The Korean Wedding Chest (New York City Premiere). 2009. 82 min. In Korean and German with English subtitles.
“When I opened a Korean email in fall 2007 I didn’t imagine that I would soon be opening a well-stocked miracle box, the inspiring contents of which would become a film: The Korean Wedding Chest. Even though (or especially because) this carefully packed, filled, and tied-up wooden chest was assembled according to the rules of an honored tradition, it offers a remarkable insight into and overview of modern Korean society. I was inspired to look more closely at the old and new rituals to determine what is old in the new and new in the old. A modern fairytale about the amazing phenomenon of new mega cities emerging everywhere and their contradictory societies caught in the balancing act. Bon voyage into the present!” –Ulrike Ottinger