- Screening
Cosmos Ottinger movie program - Johanna d’Arc of Mongolia
In cooperation with Kino Moviac, Baden-Baden
Dates
- Su 27.03., 15:00
Artists
- Ulrike Ottinger
Language
- German
Admission
To the exhibition
The town approaches. The gleaming white felt yurts with the collar-shaped smoke vents stand on wagons pulled by twenty-two oxen in two rows of eleven oxen each. The town draws ever closer in a broad front. A rider breaks away from the wandering town and comes towards the caravan at a fast trot. - Screenplay excerpt
The film depicts what happens when two extremely different cultures meet. The story begins on the Trans-Siberian Railway, which has been transporting our European civilization through the raw wilderness of the Siberian tundra and taiga for 100 years: A miniature museum on wheels, crammed with Western luxury. They traveled with ballrooms and dance orchestras, with church wagons and built-in organs. Luxury suites and saloon carriages, library, dining and kitchen carriages housed everything that high society expected from a first-class hotel at the time. However, the great myth of the Trans-Siberian is not only based on the history of the crowned heads and the ever-traveling diplomatic corps. There were also the wooden benches in the 3rd class compartments, where hunters, adventurers, soldiers, poor peasants and Jewish families fleeing pogroms sat closely packed together.
The protagonists and other passengers meet in this atmosphere:
LADY WINDERMERE, an elegant English lady, private scholar and ethnologist in old-fashioned style (Delphine Seyrig).
FANNY ZIEGFELD, an uncomplicated, slightly frivolous American musical star on a pleasure trip (Gillian Scalici).
GIOVANNA, a young, almost childlike adventure traveler with a backpack and walkman (Inès Sastre).
In the dining car, where a Georgian LADIES' COMBO KALINKA SISTERS provide entertainment, the women get to know each other and meet three eccentric gentlemen (Else Nabu, Jacinta, Sevimbike Elibay).
ALEXANDER BORIS NIKOLAJ NIKOLAJEWITSCH MURAWJEW, a Russian officer proud of his Franco-Russian heritage on his way to his outpost in the wilderness (Nougzar Sharia), accompanied by his adjutant:
ALJOSCHA, who suffers from the abandonment of his classical ballet training at the Bolshoi Theater (Christoph Eichhorn).
MICKEY KATZ, a voluminous, hypochondriac and very eloquent tenor of the Jewish-American musical, who pays homage to the most unusual delicacies of Russian cuisine (Peter Kern).
As is to be expected, the first - not only musical - highlights of the plot arise from the meeting of these personalities. At the border to Mongolia, the randomly thrown-together company part ways: the ladies change to the Transmongolian, which is stopped after a short ride by wild Mongolian horsewomen. It is as if they have suddenly been transported to another time. Not through a time machine, but through a still existing archaic way of life - that of the Mongolian semi-nomads - they are dramatically confronted with a culture that is alien to them. Due to their previous habits and prejudices, misunderstandings and faux pas are inevitable, giving rise to much amusement, but also to threatening situations. The seven Western ladies are kidnapped by a mysterious Mongolian princess and her companions and set off with their caravan through the overwhelming landscape of Inner Mongolia into the unknown. On their way, they see sacred trees, ancient rock paintings, a traveling city and encounter huge herds of wild horses and camels. They share the life of the nomads, live in felt tents, the yurts, feed on fatty mutton and mare's milk, experience secret hunting ceremonies and finally take part in a great festival at which rhapsodes, horse fiddlers and wrestlers perform, exciting competitions and masked dances take place. The western women ultimately seem to be swept away by their intoxicating and disturbing experiences in unexpected and contradictory ways. At the end of the film, however, all of them - with one exception - find themselves back on the trans-Mongolian train.