UNDER SNOW
Germania / 2011 / 103 min / Colour
In the region of Ichigo, in Japan, winter lasts more than half the year, covering the town with a thick blanket of snow. Over the years, the inhabitants have developed habits and customs that allow them to survive in these conditions, enriching the months with festivities and religious rites, and coining some twenty terms for snow. The director Ulrike Ottinger filmed daily life in this snowy landscape, capturing its austere beauty and most poetic aspect. In the narration, we discover the mythic traces of the “gods of the roads and streets” and the spirits of the mountains, entering the world of a splendid fox and its lover.
Ulrike Ottinger
A German director, documentarist, producer, photographer, and intellectual, Ottinger was born in 1942 in Baden-Württemberg. After several films centred on Berlin, she began a series of voyages in the Far East, which she drew upon for films and documentaries with an ethnographic slant, including China. Die Künste - der Alltag (1986), Taiga (1992), and The Korean Wedding Chest (2009). In 1989 she participated in the Berlinale with the feature film, Johanna d’Arc of Mongolia.
Credits
Language English Screenplay Ulrike OttingerCinematography Ulrike OttingerSound Andreas Mücke NiesytkaEditing Bettina BlickwedeMusic Yumiko TanakaMain cast Kabuki actor Takeo: Takamasa Fujima, Kabuki actor Mako: Kiyotsugu FujimaProducer Ulrike OttingerProduction company Deckert Distribution
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