Paris Calligrammes

Fifty years on, is it possible to make a film from the perspective of the young artist that you once were – or wanted to become? This is the question that artist and filmmaker Ulrike Ottinger asks herself at the start of her journey through the cultural life of 1960s Paris. Ottinger captures the atmosphere and spirit of a turbulent period in this collage of archive material and fragments from feature films and home movies. We see images of chain-smoking, pastis-sipping artists at Café de Flore, as well as the less romantic aspects of the zeitgeist: racism and colonialism. (IDFA)