Johanna d'Arc of Mongolia

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Movie
Original title Johanna d'Arc of Mongolia
Country of production Germany , France
original language German , French , Mongolian , Russian
Publishing year 1989
length 165 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Ulrike Ottinger
script Ulrike Ottinger
production Hans Kaden ,
Ulrike Ottinger
music Wilhelm Dieter Siebert
camera Ulrike Ottinger
cut Dörte Völz-Mammarella
occupation

Johanna d'Arc of Mongolia (English title: Joan of Arc of Mongolia ) is a multilingual film by Ulrike Ottinger . The film is a genre mixture of ethnological film and feature film.

action

The film initially takes place on the Trans-Siberian Railway , where the four protagonists meet. The first to be introduced is Lady Windmere, an English ethnologist who lives in her own luxuriously appointed car on the train. Then the German senior student adviser Ms. Müller-Vohwinkel is shown in her compartment, where she reads from a travel guide. Fanny Ziegfeld, an American musical star, sings songs for Ludmilla, the waitress, in exchange for tea with rum and “sweet, high-calorie Rotfront waffles”. The last and youngest protagonist travels third class with a backpack and walkman - the eponymous Giovanna.

In Ulan-Ude the women change to the Trans-Mongolian Railway , which is stopped by Mongolian horsewomen after a short time. The armed riders, and their leader Ulun Iga, kidnap all women on the train. In this second part of the film, various documentary-looking shots of the Mongolian landscape are shown, as well as supposedly authentic Mongolian clothing and rituals. At the end of the film, all western women are brought back to the Trans-Mongolian Railway. Only Giovanna, who now has a relationship with Ulun Iga, remains torn back and forth.

production

The dichotomy of the film, between shots in the train and in the Mongolian landscape, also underlines the different camera positions. While medium shots are used in the first part, depending on the space , in the second part mostly the long shot is used. Ulrike Ottinger explains another difference between the parts in an interview:

"In the first part, the action is on the train. These scenes were all shot in meticulously constructed sets made in the studio - even the glimpses of the passing outside landscape, as seen through the windows. I wanted the audience to see the true artificiality of that construction. So, you catch a glimpse of a rip in the back wall of Lady Windermere's private car. But the rip is really a trompe l'oeil painting made by theatrical set painters. It signals this as an intentionally highly artificial presentation of the Western world and its fantasies of the East. "

In contrast, the landscape shots were all shot on site. The recordings in Mongolia lasted a total of two and a half months.

reception

In the academic reception, general questions of ethnological film are dealt with on the basis of Johanna d'Arc . The film scholar Julia Knight points out that Ottinger makes the Eurocentric “ gaze ” visible by integrating a group of Western women, including an ethnologist, into the Mongolian locations of the film. The final scene in particular shows “both cultures as artificial constructs”.

In contrast, the German scholar Shanta Rao emphasizes the problematic way Ottinger deals with Mongolian culture from her point of view, which Rao describes as othering . Rao strongly criticizes the ahistorical constructions of Mongolian traditions through the film, for example Ottinger's portrayal of a Naadam . This is particularly problematic in connection with the fading out of "historical and political questions concerning the" reality "of Mongolia's colonization ".

Awards

  • 1989: Gold film tape in the visual design category
  • 1989: Montréal Public Jury Prize

literature

  • Grace An: Filmmaking at a Crossroads. In: Transfers. No. 8 (1), 2018, pp. 130-133.
  • Janet A. Kaplan: Johanna d'Arc of Mongolia. Interview with Ulrike Ottinger. In: Art Journal. No. 61 (3), 2002, pp. 6-21.
  • Julia Knight: Observing Rituals. Ulrike Ottinger's Johanna d'Arc of Mongolia . In: Majer O'Sickey, Ingeborg; von Zadow, Ingeborg (ed.): Triangulated Visions. Women in recent German Cinema. New York, 1998, pp. 103-115.
  • Shambhavi Prakash: Ethnographic Experimentalism. Ulrike Oettinger's Johanna d'Arc of Mongolia and Freak Orlando and Hubert Fichte's Petersilie and die Palette. Dissertation at the State University of New Jersey, 2015.
  • Shanta Rao: Ethno-Documentary Discourse an Cultural Otherness in Ulrike Ottinger's Johanna d'Arc of Mongolia . In: Jankowsky, Karen; Love Carla (ed.): Other Germanies. Questioning identity in women's literature and art. New York, 1997, pp. 147-164.
  • Cyrus Shahan: Decadent Fetishism in Ulrike Ottinger's. Johanna d'Arc of Mongolia. In: Seminar - A Journal of Germanic Studies. No. 45 (2), 2009, pp. 174-188.
  • Katie Trumpener : Johanna d'Arc of Mongolia in the Mirror of Dorian Gray: Ethnographic Recordings and the Aesthetics of the Market in the Recent Films of Ulrike Ottinger. In: New German Critique , No. 60, Special Issue on German Film History, 1993, pp. 77-99.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Grace To: Filmmaking at a Crossroads. In: Transfers. No. 8 (1), 2018, pp. 130-133.
  2. ↑ a b Janet A. Kaplan: Johanna d'Arc of Mongolia: Interview with Ulrike Ottinger . In: Journal , No. 61 (3), 2002, pp. 6-21.
  3. ↑ a b Julia Knight: Observing Rituals. Ulrike Ottinger's Johanna d'Arc of Mongolia . In: Majer O'Sickey, Ingeborg; von Zadow, Ingeborg (ed.): Triangulated Visions. Women in recent German Cinema. New York, 1998, pp. 103-115.
  4. ^ A b Shanta Rao: Ethno-Documentary Discourse an Cultural Otherness in Ulrike Ottinger's Johanna d'Arc of Mongolia . In: Jankowsky, Karen; Love Carla (ed.): Other Germanies. Questioning identity in women's literature and art. New York, 1997, pp. 147-164.