Ulrike Ottinger:

The Berlin Trilogy

24.–26.4.2026

At the age of 20, determined to become an artist, she moved to Paris, trained in etching at Johnny Friedlaender’s studio, and attended lectures by Claude Levi-Strauss and Louis Althusser at the Collège de France. During her seven-year stay in Paris, she worked as an artist in the fields of painting, photography, and performance, and in 1966 wrote her first screenplay, entitled Die mongolische Doppelschublade (The Mongolian Double Drawer).

In 1969, she returned to Konstanz, where she founded the filmclub visuell in cooperation with the University of Konstanz and opened the gallery and publishing house ​‘galeriepress’. During this period, in the early 1970s, she also began her long-standing collaboration with the artists Tabea Blumenschein – with whom she made her first film, Laokoon & Söhne (Laocoon & Sons) (1971−1973), which premiered at the Arsenal Berlin – and Magdalena Montezuma. In 1973, she finally moved to Berlin, where she enjoyed her first international successes. In addition to her documentary and feature film projects, in which she deals intensively with ethnological and anthropological issues, she also creates stage works for theater and opera, and produced artist books.

This year, her film Die Blutgräfin (The Blood Countess), dialogues in participation with Elfriede Jelinek and a star-studded cast including Isabelle Huppert, Birgit Minichmayr, and Lars Eidinger, celebrated its world première at the Berlinale.

Ottinger’s Berlin Trilogy was created between the late 1970s and early 1980s and will be shown on three consecutive evenings during this year’s Galerientage in Graz, also known as aktuelle kunst in graz. The trilogy comprises the films Bildnis einer Trinkerin (Ticket of No Return) (1979), Freak Orlando (1981), and Dorian Gray im Spiegel der Boulevardpresse (Dorian Gray in the Mirror of the Yellow Press) (1984), featuring performances across the three films from Tabea Blumenschein, Delphine Seyrig, Magdalena Montezuma, Veruschka von Lehndorff, Eddie Constantine, Nina Hagen, Orpha Termin, and Kurt Raab, with music by composer Peer Raben.

In Bildnis einer Trinkerin (Ticket of No Return) with Tabea Blumenschein, viewers are taken on a journey to West Berlin in the 1970s, with its stylized aesthetic. In a somewhat detached manner, this experimental masterpiece of German cinema visualizes the topography of the city with a nameless and beautiful protagonist. She is a traveler arriving at Tegel Airport who wants to pursue her passion undisturbed: drinking ­– in order to forget.

In Freak Orlando, Ottinger uses five episodes to present a world chronicle incorporating error, incompetence, lust for power, madness, fear, everyday life, and cruelty, depicted through the lives of freaks and outcasts. The central figure is Orlando, who appears in many different guises and times: as an attraction in a department store, as a wondrous figure from the Middle Ages, as a victim of religious fanaticism and the Inquisition, as an artist in a sideshow, and finally as an entertainer at fairs and festivals. Depicted in five scenes, in this journey, Orlando passes through the Middle Ages, the Enlightenment, and the present day like a brightly lit theater, experiencing exploitation, persecution, love, betrayal, violence, and death, encountering religious zeal, colonial deportation, and society’s thirst for sensation. With Magdalena Montezuma in the lead role, Ottinger paints an ironic picture of a world in which those who deviate are marveled at, persecuted, and sacrificed, and history turns out to be an endless succession of cruelty and spectacle.

Finally, with Dorian Gray im Spiegel der Boulevardpresse (Dorian Gray in the Mirror of the Yellow Press), Ottinger exposes the potential totalitarianism of the media, with Veruschka von Lehndorff and Delphine Seyrig in the leading roles. Dr. Mabuse is a powerful publisher who rules over a media conglomerate that dominates national public opinion. Out of her thirst for power she creates a being who is completely dependent on her: Dorian Gray. Androgynous, beautiful, young, and rich, Gray is a dazzling dandy, artfully created to feed the desires of the masses. Dr. Mabuse makes him an idol, only to then bring him down in a staged scandal. However, the creature slowly realizes his power and ultimately turns against his creator and the empire that once brought him to life.