Regent Street Cinema is set to host the UK premiere of Ulrike Ottinger’s epic, 12-hour documentary, Chamisso’s Shadow – an unmissable documentary event like no other – which will screen in three chapters over the course of one weekend from Friday 20 July to Sunday 22 July.
Inspired by the writings of Adelbert von Chamisso (1781 – 1838) – a true renaissance man, famed poet and botanist, who in 1815 joined the Russian ship Rurikfor an expedition to the Pacific Ocean and the Bering Sea – Chamisso’s Shadow uses the diaries of Chamisso, as well as those of Georg Wilhelm Steller and Captain James Cook, to follow their journeys to ethnic groups living in the coastal areas of the Bering Sea.
Chapter 1 – Alaska and the Aleutian Islands (193 min)
Chapter One is interspersed with passages from Peter Schlemihl’s Miraculous Story, a short story written by Chamisso, as well as by accounts, songs and stories of the people Ottinger encounters on her voyage.
Chapter 2 –Part 1: Chukotka (192 min) | Chapter 2 – Part 2: Chukotka and Wrangel Island (156 min)
Chapter 2.1 and 2.2, takes the filmmaker to Chukotka located in the Far Eastern region of Russia. Ottinger establishes links to the ancient and recent histories of the surrounding islands, where the stories of characters as disparate as Roman Abramovich and Charles Cook are interlinked in the fabric of the islands’ memories.
Chapter 3 – Kamtchatka and Bering Island (177 min)
Chapter 3 leads us from Bering Island to the coast of Kamchatka.
For more information, and to book tickets, please Click Here.
