Ulrike Ottinger

Next Tuesday, October 19, the Slought Foundation is hosting a day-long retrospective of Ulrike Ottinger's work. Ottinger's work has ranged from narrative work on the more avant-garde side of the New German Cinema to experimental documentaries, including the 8- hour Taiga, about Mongolia (see this NYT review). Even including the couple of films to be distributed by Women Make Movies to educational and repertory audiences, very little of Ottinger's work has been available in the US.

I do wish for a proper theatrical screening of some of it, but short of that, gallery exhibitions like at the Slought may be the only way to watch it easily. They will have simulatenous video projection of her longer works throughout the day (9am-5pm): Twelve Chairs (198 minutes, 2004), The Korean Wedding Chest (82 minutes, 2008), Taiga: A Journey to Northern Mongolia (501 minutes, 1991/2), and Exil Shanghai (275 minutes, 1997)

From 5-7pm, there will be an evening screening of Still Moving (29 minutes, 2009) and Prater (104 minutes, 2007).

The main event (7-8:30pm), is a presentation by Ottinger herself, followed by public conversation with Kaja Silverman (University of Pennsylvania), Patricia White (Swarthmore College), and Homay King (Bryn Mawr College), moderated by Nora Alter (Temple University).

Women Directors from North Africa and the Middle East

La Nouba des Femmes du Mont-Chenoua

This week the International House is screening a series of films by women directors from North Africa and the Middle East. Organized by Patricia White (Swarthmore) and Suzanne Gauch (Temple), the series complicates the vision the West and in particular American cinema often has of Middle-Eastern societies and women's role in them. And, in the process, we get to see work that's otherwise tough to see. I have seen A Door to the Sky, a lyrical and avowedly spiritual film, the only one here to be screened on 35mm. At first it resists the narrative and aesthetic expectations I had brought from both conventional narrative and art cinema, but ultimately I valued the challenging aesthetic voice. I am eager to see other work in the series.

All screenings introduced by Patricia White. Full descriptions at the International House site.

Thursday, October 7 at 7pm

Passage (Shirin Neshat, US/Iran, 2001, 12 mins)

A Door to the Sky (Farida Ben Lyazid, Morocco, 1989, 107 mins)

Friday, October 8 at 7pm
Brick Sellers of Kabul (Lida Abdul, US/Afghanistan, 2006, 6 mins)
La Nouba des femmes de Mont-Chenoua (Assia Djebar, Algeria, 1977, 115 mins)

Saturday, October 9 at 2pm
Souha (Randa Chahal Sabbag, Lebanon, 2001, 57 mins)

Our Heedless Wars (Randa Chahal Sabbag, France/Lebanon, 1995, 61 mins)

Saturday, October 9 at 5pm
Measures of Distance (Mona Hatoum, UK, 1988, 16 mins)

Women Without Men (Shirin Neshat in collaboration with Shoja Azari, France/Germany, 2009, 95 mins)