12 January 2023

Ulrike Ottinger transfers her archive to the Akademie der Künste and Deutsche Kinemathek

The auteur film-maker, photographer, painter, theatre director and curator Ulrike Ottinger is gradually transferring her extensive artistic archive to the Akademie der Künste and Stiftung Deutsche Kinemathek. She has had close links with the two institutions for years and has been a member of the Akademie der Künste since 1997. Objects relating to her cinematic work are going to the Stiftung Deutsche Kinemathek, while the Akademie der Künste is to receive objects from her oeuvre connected with the theatre and visual arts as well as her curatorial work.

The Ulrike Ottinger archive includes numerous magnificently embellished screenplays and notebooks, production documents, work photos and production shots, advertising and press materials and reviews of all her films, opera and theatre productions and exhibitions. This is supplemented by her films, numerous costumes and film props as well as over 30,000 slides and 150,000 photos relating to the wide variety of work she did. The archive also contains an extensive body of correspondence and biographical material. In the first step her photographs will be made accessible to the public.

Ulrike Ottinger was born in Constance in 1942. She worked as an independent artist in Paris from 1962 to 1969 before finding her way to film-making via the visual arts in the early 1970s. After returning to West Germany, she founded filmclub visuell in Constance in 1969 and opened galeriepress, a gallery and publishing house. She made her first film Laocoon & Sons between 1971 and 1973. In 1973 she moved to Berlin, where she continued to make feature films. In 1979 she started making her Berlin trilogy, which consists of Ticket of No Return (1979), Freak Orlando (1981) and Dorian Gray in the Mirror of the Yellow Press (1984).
In addition to her feature films, Ottinger has also poured herself into documentary film projects such as China: The Arts – The People (1985), Taiga (1992), Exile Shanghai (1997), Südostpassage (2002), Chamisso’s Schadow (2016) and most recently Paris Calligrammes (2020).

Ottinger also works in theatre and opera. She has staged productions in numerous settings including for the Berliner Ensemble, Staatstheater Stuttgart, Haus der Berliner Festspiele and steirischer herbst in Graz. She designs all the sets for her plays herself. She has shown her photographs and films at major art exhibitions like the Biennale di Venezia, documenta and the Berlin Biennale and has had numerous solo exhibitions in museums and galleries around the world.

A listing of her many films, exhibitions and awards can be found at www.ulrikeottinger.com.

In conjunction with the transfer of the collection, a film discussion with Ulrike Ottinger will take place at the Deutsche Kinemathek on Friday, 20 January 2023 at 6.30 pm. The evening is jointly organised by the Kinemathek and the Einstein Forum.
The event will begin with a symbolic acceptance of the archive by the Akademie der Künste (Werner Heegewaldt, Director of the Archive) and Stiftung Deutsche Kinemathek (Dr Rainer Rother).

For questions about the archives
Dr Torsten Musial, Head of Department, Film and Media Arts Archives, Akademie der Künste musial@adk.de, T+49(0)30 200 57-32 58 / -30 00
Connie Betz, Head of Collections, Deutsche Kinemathek
cbetz@deutsche-kinemathek.de, T +49(0)30 300 903-40

Event details
“Realität ist eine Konstruktion, manchmal eine Illusion” (Reality is a construct, an illusion at times)
Film discussion with Ulrike Ottinger
Moderation: Rüdiger Zill, Einstein Forum, and Kristina Jaspers, Deutsche Kinemathek, with film clips
Deutsche Kinemathek
Event room, 4th floor
Potsdamer Straße 2
10785 Berlin
Free admission

Press photos available here
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Press contact
Heidi B. Zapke, hbzapke@deutsche-kinemathek.de, T +49(0)30 300 903-820