Südostpassage. Eine Reise zu den neuen weißen Flecken auf de

This (very) long documentary came about as a project for the eleventh Documenta (2002), the leading five-yearly exhibition of modern visual arts in the German town of Kassel. Ottinger, who previously had a major body of art as an idiosyncratic feminist feature director, adopts an almost ethnographic approach, which she previously used in her major project Taiga (1991-92), a report lasting more than eight hours of her journeys through Mongolia. This time, she started closer to home. From her home town of Berlin, she made many journeys through the former Eastern Bloc. The journeys take us to Odessa and Istanbul, but also to many unknown and unloved spots in the countryside. The film is like a personal travelogue. People in front of the camera often reacted directly to the woman behind the camera. Ottinger did not make an objective report, but provides a personal and committed look at a landscape and life that is both distant and close by. With a sensitive eye for detail and much respect for the people she met, she sketches a picture of the people on the edge of Europe who have not been able to profit from the end of the Cold War.