Ulrike Ottinger, then a young painter, lived in Paris in the 1960s. Now a film-maker, she looks back on that time, weaving memories of the Parisian life and the upheavals of the time into a cinematic poem with the city at its center.

Orphee is a poet who becomes obsessed with Death (the Princess). They fall in love. Orphee's wife, Eurydice, is killed by the Princess' henchmen and Orphee goes after her into the Underworld. Although they have become dangerously...