Exile Shanghai

Exile Shanghai (Exil Shanghai, Germany/Israel 1997, 275 min), documentary written and directed by Ulrike Ottinger 6 life stories of German, Austrian and Russian Jews intersect in exile in Shanghai. This documentary traces their lives through narratives, photographs, documents and new images of one of Asia’s biggest metropolises. With their numerous contradictory conflicting histories and populations, the documentary’s episodes converge to shape a startling new account of a historic exile. Frau Ottinger, the grande dame of German avant-garde film and “nomad filmmaker”, worked in Asia numerous times in her five-decade career. Combining fact and fiction, Ottinger’s films follow her adventurous curiosity and create a unique poetic imagery. This film is the middle of her three films JOHANNA D’ARC OF MONGOLIA (1989), EXILE SHANGHAI (1997) and UNDER SNOW (2011), which follow women in Mongolia, exiles in Shanghai, and Kabuki artists in Japan, respectively.