Once upon a time there was a country known by the name of Laura Molloy. Laura Molloy was the name of this country. Only women lived in Laura MolloyEsmeralda del Rio was a woman. One day Esmeralda del Rio had the idea to undergo a series of transformations, which were to take her very far. So far did she go that she had no way of knowing how far she had gone. Two things were certain: Esmeralda del Rio was blond and in her own way she practiced a kind of magic which I would like to call 'blond magic'.

According to tradition, a Korean groom offers an elaborate wedding chest to his bride's parents. Dressed in traditional garb, he carries its meticulously layered treasures, each one prescribed by centuries-old custom, strapped to his back all the way to their door. Venerable filmmaker Ulrike Ottinger delicately unpacks the ornate rituals and complex mores of the Korean wedding rite. While clearly reverent of the past, Korea also has a pervasive modern wedding industry, which amplifies the drive for everything to be picture perfect, down to the last highly codified detail. The traditional Pe Baek ceremony, which sees the newly married couple receive their parents, is now awkwardly, and rather hilariously, run by wedding assistants who physically lift relatives into position. Like a polite guest, however, Ottinger never interrupts, allowing her poetic images to speak for themselves as old and new Korea marry in this fascinating cultural portrait.

The final installment in Ulrike Ottinger’s Berlin Trilogy (following TICKET OF NO RETURN and FREAK ORLANDO) casts Delphine Seyrig as the nefarious Fritz Lang supervillain Dr. Mabuse, here the head of a powerful media empire that seeks to create headlines by manufacturing (and then publicly destroying) its own celebrity: the wealthy, handsome playboy Dorian Gray.

Six life stories of German, Austrian and Ashkenazi Jews which intersect in exile in Shanghai. Out of narratives, photographs, documents and new images of the biggest and most contradictory metropolis of the Far East an entity develops in which the historic exile takes and turns on a completely current power and appeal.

In Echigo, Japan, the snow often lies several feet deep well into May, covering landscapes and villages. Over the centuries, the inhabitants have organised their lives accordingly. In order to record their very distinctive forms of everyday life, their festivals, and religious rituals, Ulrike Ottinger journeyed to the mythical snow country – accompanied by two Kabuki performers. Taking the parts of the students Takeo and Mako, they follow in the footsteps of Bokushi Suzuki, who in the mid-19th century wrote his remarkable book “Snow Country Tales”.