Ulrike Ottinger

Ulrike Ottinger is regarded as one of the leading avant-garde film makers and contemporary artists of her generation. Ottinger, who was born in Konstanz, in 1962, is now able to look back on an extraordinarily productive creative period lasting 60 years, in which she moved on from painting and photography to discover the medium of film. She has shared a longstanding collaboration with the artists Tabea Blumenschein and Magdalena Montezuma, with whom she has developed a particularly expressive, bizarre and at times surreal film style. In addition to documentary and feature films where she has been able to express her interests in ethnology and anthropology in artistic form, her work also includes theatre productions and artist’s books. The international museums, exhibition spaces and festivals that have honoured Ottinger’s multi-faceted oeuvre with retrospectives, exhibitions and film screenings include MoMA in New York, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Deutsche Kinemathek in Berlin, the David Zwirner Gallery in New York and the Cinématheque française in Paris. Her career as an artist has been recognised with awards that include the Hannah Höch Prize from the State of Berlin, the German Film Award, the German Film Critics’ Award on several occasions and, most recently, the BERLINALE Camera. Ottinger also became a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which presents the annual Academy Awards (“Oscars”) in 2019.