Ulrike Ottinger's Madame X w/ Gary Indiana
Wednesday, March 30th 8pm

Ulrike Ottinger's Madame X - An Absolute Ruler (1978)

Participant Inc.
253 E Houston St.
New York, NY 10002

Dirty Looks is excited to announce the screening of Madame X - An Absolute Ruler, the experimental feature by Ulrike Ottinger, with a very special post-discussion by writer and former Ottinger actor, Gary Indiana.

View Card
View Publication (PDF)

Chinese Orlando - stop
to all women - stop
offer world - stop
full of gold - stop
love - stop
adventure - stop
at sea - stop
call Chinese Orlando - stop!

With this classified ad printed throughout the world, Madame X places a call to all bored feminists: professors, housewives, divas. An appeal to join her carnal oceanic quest, her voyage to loot and plunder the bourgeoisie, to dash all sexual boundaries and binaries in this singular pursuit of thrill and intrigue. Ulrike Ottinger’s Madame X is a thrilling and wild adventure on the high seas, a firey feminist pirate playland where nothing is sacred and any trade is fair game.

Ulrike Ottinger is one of the most exciting and epic experimental filmmakers at work today. Her next film, The Blood Countess, starring Isabelle Huppert and Tilda Swinton with a screenplay by Nobel Prize winning author Elfriede Jelinek, is currently in pre-production, and her past films include Ticket of No Return (1979), Freak Orlando (1981), Dorian Gray in the Mirror of the Yellow Press (1984), Joan of Arc of Mongolia (1989), and the recent documentary, Prater (2007). Seen as a precursor to abstract epic art films like Matthew Barney's Cremaster Cycle, Madame X is Ottinger's most celebrated film. Gary Indiana is the author of many books, Horse Crazy, Gone Again and recently Andy Warhol and the Can the Sold the World and a collection of early writings, Last Seen Entering the Biltmore.

An interview with Ottinger on Electric Sheep
A few pages from Patricia White's Screen article on google books
A recent podcast with Ottinger and Kaja Silverman
Gary Indiana reads from his recent The Shanghai Gesture on the Bomblog