The films of Ulrike Ottinger (b. 1942) are shaped by a fascination with place, a topical and topographical curiosity that drives their wanderlust across locales both imagined and real, from the fantastically spectral Berlin of the early Freak Orlando and the nostalgia shrouded Viennese amusement park of Prater, to the vast, remote steppes of Central Asia explored in Taiga and the busy banquet halls of present-day Seoul in The Korean Wedding Chest. Ottinger’s fiction films kaleidoscope a carnivalesque vision of the world, staging unpredictable encounters with a remarkably motley cast of “freak” outsiders – lovers, pirates, brigands, grafters and their adversaries. While Ottinger’s documentaries, in contrast, focus insightfully on the quotidian reality of everyday people, but are no less colorful and exuberant in their spirited exploration of the playful and poetic intersection of the traditional and contemporary. 　　Born in Konstanz, Germany, Ottinger spent much of the 1960s working as a painter in Paris – where she also studied with the likes of Claude Lévi-Strauss and Louis Althusser – before launching her film career in Berlin in the early 1970s. Ottinger’s earliest films grow out of her close association with various Berlin subcultures and art scenes and involved collaborations with such luminary figures as Tabea Blumenschein, as well as Irm Hermann, Kurt Raab and Magdalena Montezuma, actors central to the Fassbinder scene. International recognition and reknown followed her first feature film Madame X (1977), which especially drew the interest of queer and feminist critics and scholars in the U.S. To this day Ottinger’s films are held up for their radicalness, not only of narrative but also of their treatment of sexuality and of gender itself. A Renaissance woman, Ottinger writes her own scripts, frequently operates the camera and even designs the often elaborate sets and costumes showcased in her films. 　　The fall of the Berlin Wall and a massive funding crisis for “art cinema” coincided at the beginning of the 1990s to inspire a distinct shift in Ottinger’s cinema away from the theatrical extravagances of her early film work to a mode of carefully observed documentary. Yet uniting and cross-pollinating Ottinger’s documentary and fiction work are a set of running themes – a concern for the normative function of power and its ability to repress and ostracize difference; a nostalgia for the cosmopolitism of pre-war Central Europe; and a delight in the richness and beauty of “other cultures,” be they popular, archaic or simply non-Western. 　　Taiga 　　Directed by Ulrike Ottinger. 　　Germany 1992, 16mm, color, 501 min. Mongolian and Tuvinian with English subtitles 　　Ottinger returned to Mongolia to craft her incredible epic documentary portrait of reindeer herders on the far Northern steppes. While offering rare glimpses into the shamanic ceremonies, hunts, weddings and amusements that color the herders’ lives, Taiga uses its nine hours to resist any notion of the nomads as simply “exotic” by creating a fully immersive encounter with the Mongolians daily routines and rituals. Bearing mesmerizing witness to a world seemingly out of time, Taiga is ultimately a study in contrasts: between the vast steppes and the intimacy of the nomads’ private spaces, between the mobility of the nomadic life and the fixity of Ottinger’s camera, between pre-modern practices and their contemporary variations.

The films of Ulrike Ottinger (b. 1942) are shaped by a fascination with place, a topical and topographical curiosity that drives their wanderlust across locales both imagined and real, from the fantastically spectral Berlin of the early Freak Orlando and the nostalgia shrouded Viennese amusement park of Prater, to the vast, remote steppes of Central Asia explored in Taiga and the busy banquet halls of present-day Seoul in The Korean Wedding Chest. Ottinger’s fiction films kaleidoscope a carnivalesque vision of the world, staging unpredictable encounters with a remarkably motley cast of “freak” outsiders – lovers, pirates, brigands, grafters and their adversaries. While Ottinger’s documentaries, in contrast, focus insightfully on the quotidian reality of everyday people, but are no less colorful and exuberant in their spirited exploration of the playful and poetic intersection of the traditional and contemporary. 　　Born in Konstanz, Germany, Ottinger spent much of the 1960s working as a painter in Paris – where she also studied with the likes of Claude Lévi-Strauss and Louis Althusser – before launching her film career in Berlin in the early 1970s. Ottinger’s earliest films grow out of her close association with various Berlin subcultures and art scenes and involved collaborations with such luminary figures as Tabea Blumenschein, as well as Irm Hermann, Kurt Raab and Magdalena Montezuma, actors central to the Fassbinder scene. International recognition and reknown followed her first feature film Madame X (1977), which especially drew the interest of queer and feminist critics and scholars in the U.S. To this day Ottinger’s films are held up for their radicalness, not only of narrative but also of their treatment of sexuality and of gender itself. A Renaissance woman, Ottinger writes her own scripts, frequently operates the camera and even designs the often elaborate sets and costumes showcased in her films. 　　The fall of the Berlin Wall and a massive funding crisis for “art cinema” coincided at the beginning of the 1990s to inspire a distinct shift in Ottinger’s cinema away from the theatrical extravagances of her early film work to a mode of carefully observed documentary. Yet uniting and cross-pollinating Ottinger’s documentary and fiction work are a set of running themes – a concern for the normative function of power and its ability to repress and ostracize difference; a nostalgia for the cosmopolitism of pre-war Central Europe; and a delight in the richness and beauty of “other cultures,” be they popular, archaic or simply non-Western. 　　Taiga 　　Directed by Ulrike Ottinger. 　　Germany 1992, 16mm, color, 501 min. Mongolian and Tuvinian with English subtitles 　　Ottinger returned to Mongolia to craft her incredible epic documentary portrait of reindeer herders on the far Northern steppes. While offering rare glimpses into the shamanic ceremonies, hunts, weddings and amusements that color the herders’ lives, Taiga uses its nine hours to resist any notion of the nomads as simply “exotic” by creating a fully immersive encounter with the Mongolians daily routines and rituals. Bearing mesmerizing witness to a world seemingly out of time, Taiga is ultimately a study in contrasts: between the vast steppes and the intimacy of the nomads’ private spaces, between the mobility of the nomadic life and the fixity of Ottinger’s camera, between pre-modern practices and their contemporary variations.

讲述在这个强迫恋爱的社会，就算不恋爱也能收获幸福的二十岁韩沙朗的故事。

讲述在这个强迫恋爱的社会，就算不恋爱也能收获幸福的二十岁韩沙朗的故事。

The Nuer call themselves Naath. Only their immediate neighbors, the Dinka, Shilluk and Arabs, call them Nuer. Most foreigners, which includes those with whom the Nuer neither fought nor traded, are called Bar which means 'almost entirely cattleless'. Those foreigners who live even more remotely and include Europeans are called Jur which means 'entirely cattleless', a most unthinkable state indeed. 　　The people of Ciengach, where the film was made, are the Eastern Jikany, one of about a sixteen distinct tribes of Nuer. Twenty-five years ago E.E. Evans Pritchard estimated the total population of Nuer to be around a quarter of a million. Since then the number has undoubtedly dwindled considerably due to warfare, civil strife, sickness, drought and the general abandonment of traditional lifeways. 　　However, those who still called themselves Naath did so with an extraordinarily vivid image of themselves as superior people living a superior life. Furthermore, it was impossible not to see that their lives were inextricably tied to their herds. Ciengach is a perfected plan for co-posperity of cows and humans. 　　It cannot be said that filming the Nuer was an easy task, but visually it was always absorbing. They were seldom resentful as was the rule with the Islamicized Afar in the Danakil Desert to the Northeast. On the contrary, the Nuer had a real, even exaggerated, sense of their importance. They considered themselves handsome and displayed their elegance with pride. 　　Nuer existence has, consistent with life led on a flood plain, an almost tidal rhythm due largely to the movement of cattle into and out of the villages. At almost precisely 10:30 in the morning cows and bulls began to groan, stand up and in other ways indicate that the time had come for them to be released and on their way to graze. Within moments the entire herd was sounding a unified complaint. Men and boys then slipped the tethers from their necks and the flow of cattle began. Five more minutes and the village was virtually silent. The herd had receded toward the river and to whatever grass the younger men could find. So the days passed into twilights of returning herds and men and the nights were filled with stars and an almost intoxicating 'bucolia.'

The Nuer call themselves Naath. Only their immediate neighbors, the Dinka, Shilluk and Arabs, call them Nuer. Most foreigners, which includes those with whom the Nuer neither fought nor traded, are called Bar which means 'almost entirely cattleless'. Those foreigners who live even more remotely and include Europeans are called Jur which means 'entirely cattleless', a most unthinkable state indeed. 　　The people of Ciengach, where the film was made, are the Eastern Jikany, one of about a sixteen distinct tribes of Nuer. Twenty-five years ago E.E. Evans Pritchard estimated the total population of Nuer to be around a quarter of a million. Since then the number has undoubtedly dwindled considerably due to warfare, civil strife, sickness, drought and the general abandonment of traditional lifeways. 　　However, those who still called themselves Naath did so with an extraordinarily vivid image of themselves as superior people living a superior life. Furthermore, it was impossible not to see that their lives were inextricably tied to their herds. Ciengach is a perfected plan for co-posperity of cows and humans. 　　It cannot be said that filming the Nuer was an easy task, but visually it was always absorbing. They were seldom resentful as was the rule with the Islamicized Afar in the Danakil Desert to the Northeast. On the contrary, the Nuer had a real, even exaggerated, sense of their importance. They considered themselves handsome and displayed their elegance with pride. 　　Nuer existence has, consistent with life led on a flood plain, an almost tidal rhythm due largely to the movement of cattle into and out of the villages. At almost precisely 10:30 in the morning cows and bulls began to groan, stand up and in other ways indicate that the time had come for them to be released and on their way to graze. Within moments the entire herd was sounding a unified complaint. Men and boys then slipped the tethers from their necks and the flow of cattle began. Five more minutes and the village was virtually silent. The herd had receded toward the river and to whatever grass the younger men could find. So the days passed into twilights of returning herds and men and the nights were filled with stars and an almost intoxicating 'bucolia.'