Ulrike Ottinger's "Dorian Gray in the Mirror of the Yellow Press"

Ulrike Ottinger, Dorian Gray Im Spiegel der Boulevardpresse (Dorian Gray in the Mirror of the Yellow Press), Germany, 35mm (on Blu-Ray), Color, 150 min., 1984

Our organization will create a human being
Whom we can shape and manipulate according to our needs.
Dorian Gray: young, rich and handsome.
We will make him, seduce him and break him.

DIRTY LOOKS NYC partners with DCTV for a rare screening of Ulrike Ottinger’s epic media studies fever dream, 'Dorian Gray in the Mirror of the Yellow Press.' Plotting to boost circulation of her multinational media empire, Frau Dr. Mabuse (art film icon Delphine Seyrig) molds dapper aristocrat, Dorian Gray (60s supermodel Veruschka von Lehndorff), into a tabloid celebrity of her own designs. Introducing Dorian to a world of power and intrigue, Mabuse pairs him off with opera star Andamana (Tabea Blumenschein). But as readers tire of the new couple’s amorous exploits, Mabuse dispatches her maniacal henchmen (Fassbinder regular, Irm Hermann, Magdalena Montezuma, Barbara Valentin and writer, Gary Indiana) to kill off Dorian’s paramour. And so begins his plummet into the seedy, criminal underbelly of 1980s Berlin.

“Frau Dr. Mabuse, whose illustrious precursor is Fritz Lang’s psychopathic, counterfeiting boss of the underworld, derives her power from the fabrication of reality based on the seduction of images and words. Her perfect object and victim is the Bauhaus-dandy Dorian, whose relation to Oscar Wilde’s prototype is as marginal as his relation to power. The fairy-tale framework of Ottinger’s feature compositions asserts itself strongly in this film as Dorian replaces the evil tycoon and becomes king of the media conglomerate.“

Ulrike Ottinger is a prolific German filmmaker who started her visual art career in Munich and Paris in painting, photography, and performance. Ottinger’s commitment to film took off with her move to Berlin. Her “Berlin trilogy” began with 'Ticket of No Return' (1979), followed by 'Freak Orlando' (1981) and 'Dorian Gray.' Collaborating on the films were Delphine Seyrig, Magdalena Montezuma, Veruschka von Lehndorff, Eddie Constantine, and Kurt Raab, as well as the composer Peer Raben. 'China. The Arts – The People' (1985) was the first in a series of long documentary films made in the course of Ulrike Ottinger’s travels through Asia. She made the narrative film 'Johanna D’Arc of Mongolia' in Mongolia in 1989, followed three years later by the eight-hour documentary film 'Taiga.' Alongside her journeys to the Far East, she applied a virtually “ethnographic” attention to the changes taking place in her own city between the fall of the Berlin Wall and German reunification in the documentary film 'Countdown.' After the documentary film 'Exile Shanghai' (1997), her travels took her to southeast Europe, where she once again created a documentary film and a narrative film: 'Southeast Passage' (2002) and 'Twelve Chairs' (2004). Recent films include 'Under Snow' (2011), 'The Korean Wedding Chest' (2008), and 'Prater' (2007).