Infected with a sense of adventure, and subtly satirical of the ethnographic and tourist lens, this boldly colourful and ravishing film marked a dramatic shift in German filmmaker Ulrike Ottinger’s filmography towards Asia. A group of white European women — guided by the extravagant British anthropologist Lady Windermere, portrayed by French arthouse diva Delphine Seyrig (Jeanne Dielman, India Song) in her final film role — is travelling on the Trans-Siberian Express across Soviet Russia towards China. In Mongolia, they are stopped and kidnapped by a local tribe, and a lesbian love triangle gradually develops between Lady Windermere, her younger protégé Giovanna, and their captor, the Mongolian warrior princess Ulan Iga.

The screening will be preceded by an introduction from the event’s curator, Russian-Korean film worker Misha Zakharov, and discussion with the London-based Buryat artist Margarita Galandina on the Mongolian Indigenous rituals and culture presented in the film.