Four women travelling solo on the Trans-Siberian railway strike up a friendship – a French-speaking private tutor based in London, a German university lecturer, a Broadway singer, and a young backpacker. After transferring to the Trans-Mongolian railway, the four are kidnapped by a Mongolian princess and her mounted army.
In 1988, Ulrike Ottinger was the first western director to get permission to film in Inner Mongolia. Equally based on anthropological accounts and feminist fantasy, she created a beguiling mixture of far eastern fable and ethnographic documentation. With a musical tapestry by the Georgian trio Kalinka Sisters, traditional celebrations and shamanic rituals lead to a boisterous rendezvous of cultures. Talking about the film in 1989, Ottinger said “my film is not trying to create an exotic image, but to explore the issue of cultural transfer. If that results in exoticism, it is never identified with ‘the foreign’, but rather with an unsuccessful encounter with it. I don’t mean that in an entirely negative way, because it can certainly produce something exciting”.

FRG 1989, directed by Ulrike Ottinger, German, French, Mongolian, 166 min, English subtitles, rated: 12

Guest: Ulrike Ottinger