Cinema Can Do World Travel: Taiga

Ulrike Ottinger, whose films we’ve distributed since the start of her cinema career and repeatedly presented at Potsdamer Platz in numerous retrospectives, is an unhurried traveler. Her destinations are remote places, fantastical worlds, past eras, often all three at once. This applies to TAIGA in particular, which describes a journey to the yak and reindeer nomads of the northern part of Mongolia. Ottinger follows the reindeer breeding families in their autumn, winter and summer camps. The protagonists of the film comment on how things used to be, talk about what has been lost, forgotten or changed. “The dramatic structure doesn’t just follow the journey to these two peoples, but also the journey to their own history, for which their help is enlisted. In self-stagings, they present themselves during their everyday lives, their celebrations, their religious rites” (Ulrike Ottinger). Ottinger’s eight-hour ethnographic project consists of 10 parts and 38 chapters and is showing with two intermissions during which Mongolian specialties will be served. (mg)