Ulrike Ottinger, “Thinking in Pictures: In Conversation with Deniz Göktürk”
Tuesday, 12 March 2019, 18:30 PDT
Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA)
2155 Center Street
Berkeley, CA
Sponsors: Mosse Lectures, Mosse Foundation, UC Berkeley Department of German, BAMPFA, Pacific Film Archive
Moderated by Professor Deniz Göktürk
German artist Ulrike Ottinger (born 1942) works in film, photography, and the visual arts and has been associated with movements including the New German Cinema, feminism, and ethnographic film over the course of her prestigious career. As a filmmaker, she has always directed from behind the lens of the camera, bringing her talents as a cinematographer to the fore and uniting her directorial vision with the way she witnesses the world. Her films are distinguished by their marvelous subjects and sense of wonder in all things. This series features her Berlin trilogy made between 1979 and 1984—Ticket of No Return, Freak Orlando, and The Image of Dorian Gray in the Yellow Press—as examples of her work in the narrative form, for which she has often created fantastical images. Also included are several nonfiction works that reveal her fascination with history: the award-winning Prater, about the amusement park in Vienna; Exile Shanghai, which traces the experiences of members of the Jewish diaspora who made their way to Shanghai in the 1930s; and the monumental Chamisso’s Shadow, a work of remarkable beauty filmed on her journey to the remote reaches of the Bering Sea, tracing the paths of past explorers. We are honored that Ulrike Ottinger will be our filmmaker in residence for a week coinciding with her Mosse Lecture on March 12, presented in partnership with the Department of German at UC Berkeley.
-Ottinger bio written by Susan Oxtoby, Senior Film Curator at BAMPFA
The UC Berkeley Department of German and Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive are pleased to host Ulrike Ottinger’s Mosse Lecture. Ottinger will present an illustrated talk discussing her approach to the visual design of her films, as well as her research methods for a nonfiction project like Chamisso’s Shadow. Following her presentation, Ottinger will be joined for an onstage conversation with Deniz Göktürk, professor of German and film studies at UC Berkeley.
Ottinger’s talk is the third Mosse Lecture hosted by the Department of German since the prestigious lecture series began at UC Berkeley. The Mosse Lectures at UC Berkeley are public humanities events with a focus on the cultural significance of visual and other media. The Berkeley series has included conversations with eminent filmmakers and writers on questions of capitalism, populism, utopian fiction, documentary poetics, and cultural memory.
This series is organized by the UC Berkeley Department of German with support from The Mosse Foundation and the George L. Mosse Program in History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Co-presenting partners include the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA) and the German Historical Institute.