Ulrike Ottinger

Constanza (Germany), 1942. Artist, film director and photographer and one of the key figures in the so-called New German Cinema (Neue Deutsche Welle), a movement which redefined national, political and cultural identity through its attitude and films in the 1970s. Alongside Fassbinder and Werner Schroeter, Ottinger incorporates sexuality, the body and music as identifying features of that new youth, thus breaking with and stretching the conventions of a cinema in search of meaning. It is important to point out her ability to move from one discipline to another, from cinema to photography, from photography to literature, from literature to drawing. Her confidence in the art as a tool for getting rid of conventions and boundaries is one of her beliefs. She has made 24 films and her style has ranged from pictorial fiction –controversial and ground-breaking in her early work– to the purest documentary approach, making some of her films oriental travel journals.

http://www.ulrikeottinger.com