Saturday 30 October 2004, 18.30

Ulrike Ottinger, Germany 1989, 189'

Ottinger's epic adventure traces a fantastic encounter between two different worlds. Seven western women meet aboard the sumptuous, meticulously reconstructed Trans-Siberian Express, a rolling museum of European culture. Lady Windemere, an elegant ethnographer played by the incomparable Delphine Seyrig in her last screen role, joins a prim tourist, a brash Broadway chanteuse, and an all-girl klezmer trio, revelling in campy dining car cabaret. Suddenly ambushed by a band of Mongol horsewomen, the company is abducted to the plains of Inner Mongolia and embark on a fantastic camel ride across the magnificent countryside. Although substantiated by historical and ethnographical research, the film is a fiction of transformation, metamorphosis and the problem of cultural interrelation.

Ulrike Ottinger will introduce this screening. Her film Freak Orlando will be screened at the  Goethe Institut London on Friday 29 October at 19.00.

Tate Modern  Starr Auditorium
£3.50 (£2 concessions), booking recommended

    

This event is related to the Time Zones: Recent Film and Video exhibition