Southeast Passage A Journey to the New Blank Spots on the European Map A Film by Ulrike Ottinger Germany 2002 DV-CAM / Digibeta, color and black/white, 363 minutes English or German version Part 1 (128 min.): Wroclaw - Varna Part 2 (142 min.): Odessa Part 3 ( 93 min.): Istanbul    Ulrike Ottinger Filmproduction, Berlin Commissioned and supported by Documenta 11 Supported by Hessische Filmförderung Premiere: June 6, 2002, Documenta 11, Kassel Festivals: Rotterdam, Berlin, Jerusalem etc. Distributed by Freunde der Deutschen Kinemathek e.V. Introduction Do you know the novel "The Twelve Chairs"? No? Then you really must get to know the story. The wily team of writers, Ilja Ilf and Jevgeni Petrov - the "male Brontë Sisters" from Odessa - , they even let themselves be portrayed together holding a single pencil, undertake a journey in search of the twelve chairs throughout the vast expanses of the Soviet empire. From the west to the east and the north to the south. The twelve chairs, which once belonged to an impressive drawing room set, are in the meantime scattered across the land and have ended up with the most diverse owners. No one realises that hidden in one of the upholstered chairs is a huge fortune. I knew about this hidden treasure. And so I undertook a journey to the peoples and countries of the southeast hemisphere. It also became an encounter with the gods of my artistic pantheon. As a child I possessed a style quartet game of the modern age and thus I learned at an early age that the architects edified their own temples, the emporiums and office buildings; and the writers in their temples, the modern coffee houses of the metropolises, wrote their literature for their own fame. The chairs, however, on which they once sat while writing or in lively society became, over the course of time, instruments of execution or ejector seats which drove them into emigration. Sitting on these chairs today are the female traders who sell single cigarettes or self-caught, self-smoked fish, self-roasted sunflower seeds, self-grown vegetables, self-bartered cheap products that they themselves schlepped here in striped plastic bags from far removed container markets and bus stations. Ulrike Ottinger, translated by Finbarr Morrin Concept Places and worlds beyond the interest of the media are at the mercy of the law of forgetting. The spotlight fades and that which urgently needs public attention lies in the dark: poverty, hopelessness, and the population's fear in the face of terror from the state or from gangs, of Mafia-like business practices and paramilitary despotism. This is not a journey to a far-off land, outside of our cultural circle; it takes place along the old transport and trade routes through the decaying empires of southeast Europe. The images collected at the side of the road distill something essential from a number of small but significant observations: the coincidence of the lack of coincidence in living conditions. Photographs The photographs shown were all taken through the windshield of the car, facing the direction of travel. They focus on daily life on the streets and at the same time show its movements. The car becomes an extension of the camera's housing, manifesting itself in the blurred motion in the photographed images. The rapidly passing situations must be recognized with lightning speed and caught like a Ping-Pong ball in flight - precise observations of the everyday, surrounded by the blurred signs of fleeting passage. Film The moving image of the film follows the movement of the journey, the geographic thread through southeast Europe from Berlin over Poland, the Czech Republic, and the Slovak Republic, over Romania and Bulgaria to the Black Sea. The journey continues by freighter to Odessa into the Ukraine and from there along the coast to its southeastern endpoint, Istanbul. It shows streets, markets, villages, cities, and architecture. The encounter with people and their places produces filmic miniatures. These contrast almost imperceptibly the new and the old; they give hints and become clear. After perestroika and the fall of the Berlin Wall the borders between states are more open, and yet they have become even more impassable in their actual effect. And they are invisible. Immense territories of states become blank spots on the political map, run-down areas that have been thrown into economic chaos. Unnoticed or denied by the international gaze, invisible power structures develop that make it even more difficult for people to secure their existence. It is no longer a matter of the old "heroes of the working class" but of the new heroes and heroines in the struggle for survival, who use their great courage and inexhaustible imagination to get by. They are also the ones who make the invisible borders passable. We encounter these new nomads (who were once teachers, lawyers, farmers, manual laborers) as they conduct their business at the barricades of the many borders, at the edges of small and middling streets, in the all-but-abandoned ghost towns of the rural areas, in the markets and bus stations, and in the ferment of Odessa and Istanbul. Ulrike Ottinger, translated by Steven Lindberg © Ulrike Ottinger Distribution: Freunde der Deutschen Kinemathek e.V. Potsdamer Str. 2 D-10785 Berlin Germany Contact: Karl Winter fon +49-30-269 55 150 fax +49-30-269 55 111 Sales: Available as DVD and VHS at Ulrike Ottinger Filmproduction