Madame X: An Absolute Ruler

Director: Ulrike Ottinger

1966 / 147min / DCP

The merciless pirate ruler of the China Sea, Madame X sends out a call to arms to women everywhere inviting them to leave domestic security behind for a life of “gold, love, and adventure,” but when a panoply of diverse females—including Yvonne Rainer on rollerskates—arrive to serve as her shipmates, they find themselves subjects to a new tyrannical power. In her first feature—from a screenplay, brimming with subversive brio, penned by Ripploh under his “stage name” Peggy von Schnottgenberg—Ottinger is already outrageously inimitable, with her muse Tabea Blumenschein aptly imperious in the title role (and also providing the SM-inspired costumes).

Distributor: Arsenal Institute for Film and Video Art