The Enchantment of the Blue Sailors

Germany 1975, 16 mm, color, 50 minutes

Oceania
Occult
Objective
O Sailor
O wretched Women
O Poet
O Beauty

Film-Abc

French-English-German-Russian Original
Photographs
Cast & Crew

Old Bird

Valeska Gert

Young Bird
Siren
Hawaii Girl

Tabea Blumenschein

Sailor

Rosa von Praunheim, Barry Tannenbaum

Sailor
Russian Silent Movie Mother

Jean Matelot

Aging American Star

Wally Busch

Greek God-Fairy

Peggy von Schnottgenberg (aka Frank Ripploh)

Nymph of German Romanticism

Ulrike Ottinger

Oceanic Transvestite

Rolf Gärtner, Andreas Kelling

Hawaii Girl

Itti Janz

 

Screenplay
Director

Ulrike Ottinger

Producer

Helmut Wietz

Cinematographer

Ulrike Ottinger

Editor

Helmut Wietz

Costume /Make-Up

Tabea Blumenschein

 

Supported by Irene Weitz and Adelheid Westphal

Premiere
25th Oktober 1975, Bali-Kino Berlin
in France: 28th February 1976, Cinémathèque Française, Paris

Festivals
9. Hofer Filmtage 1975
Filmfestspiele Berlin, Deutsche Reihe 1976
Bruxelles Filmfestival des Femmes 1977
Rotterdam 1978
Aperto 80 Biennale di Venezia and many more

For further reading

In collage sequences, the surrogate of synthetic sensuality takes form and seduces the sailors in the guise of a Hawaiian girl. In ritual punctuation, she distributes deaths which seemingly only the hardy siren Fatality can survive. But beyond the apparent and real rigidity of expressive forms, the film imparts a new life, which although not reversing its loss, breaks it in irony and repeats it in ritual, making visible other means of survival:

Mais ce sont de petits secrets
Il en est d'autres plus profonds
Qui se dévoileront bientôt
Et feront de vous cent morceaux
A la pensée toujours unique
Apollinaire

The film is constructed in such a way that the alternation between collage sequences and the continually repeated rhythmic sequences of images correspond to the confrontation between the organic and synthetic worlds allegorized in the film. Transformations or metamorphoses are here depicted as the means to escape fatality.

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