Icarus Films: Paris Calligrammes

Paris Calligrammes

Directed by Ulrike Ottinger

131 minutes / Color/B&W
English; French / English subtitles
Closed Captioned
Release: 2020
Copyright: 2019

Cultural Anthropology

Social Movements

Germany

Expository

PARIS CALLIGRAMMES is German filmmaker Ulrike Ottinger’s love letter to the city where she came of age, and her explorations of her own artistic growth, fueled by bookstores, jazz clubs, workshops and cafés.

“Calligramme” is the term coined by Guillaume Apollinaire for his poems featuring stunning visual typography. Like a series of calligrammes, this film is divided individual poetic segments, covering the period from Ottinger’s arrival in Paris in 1962 to her return to Germany seven years later.

In the tradition of flanerie, Ottinger writes in her director’s statement, she takes us through the city, turning her lens on decisive personal and political focal points. They include her time at a legendary bookstore, the studio where she learned the art of etching, her embrace of the French New Wave through the Cinémathèque Française, and the cafés and streets where personal artistic ferment bled into political action against the war in Algeria—and, ultimately, to the protests of May 1968.

Ottinger begins with archival footage re-creating the night she arrived in Paris—picked up by five men who looked like they’d stepped out of a film noir. Although PARIS CALLIGRAMMES was filmed nearly 60 years after the events of that night, Ottinger captures the sense of wonder and belonging she found as a young artist in Paris. She revisits her influences and admits to her failings—like an inability to fully understand the role of colonialism.

Appearing herself only occasionally in archival photos, Ottinger creates a personal film that connects her own artistic awakening to the broader social issues of the day. Combining contemporary and archival footage, she evokes the past without succumbing to nostalgia.

Ottinger, who has directed 26 films, including fiction features and experimental documentaries, was honored for her oeuvre with a Teddy Award at the Berlin International Film Festival.

“One of the great works of first-person cinema. Ottinger's personal and political masterwork. Extraordinary; a work of vital and energetic modernism.” —Richard Brody, The New Yorker

“Enriching, stimulating; vital and contradictory. Captures the zeitgeist as experienced by a young woman eager to soak up the cultural riches around her, which she then distilled through her own sensibility to create paintings reflecting the era’s upheavals.” —Jay Weissberg, Variety

“Never a dull moment; the work of a consummate artist who understands the importance of the form matching the story.” —Kaleem Aftab, Cineuropa

“Her cinema is restless, Odyssean: full of stories of exile and adventure. ['Paris Calligrammes' is] an homage to the intellectual and artistic life of the city in the 1960s.” —Amy Sherlock, Frieze Magazine

“Fresh, poignant and utterly absorbing.” —Hannah McGill, Sight and Sound

“An outstanding resource, with a cast of historical figures and world events woven into a plot with enough breadth to encourage discussions not just about art and artists, but about war, class, oppression, and multiculturalism.” —Educational Media Reviews Online (EMRO)