Shoes, Drunk Women, and Phallic Girls: Tatjana Turanskyj’s Feminist Interventions in German Cinema

Abstract:As a feminist filmmaker, Tatjana Turanskyj relentlessly grapples with the question of how an ethically engaged cinema can explore questions about women’s agency and solidarity. Inspired by a longer West German tradition of feminist filmmaking that sought to create a women’s cinema able to function as “an oppositional public sphere” (Gegenöffentlichkeit), her films eschew the conventions of dominant cinema, relying on non-didactic, non-cathartic, circular narratives. This essay unpacks the role of these aesthetic strategies in Eine flexible Frau (2010) and Top Girl (2014), which center on an alcoholic and a prostitute. My analysis argues that these films critique neoliberalism’s narratives of free choice and autonomy that compel women to render their lives knowable and meaningful. Drawing on Sianne Ngai’s conceptualization of “ugly feelings,” a phrase that encompasses a range of dysphoric feelings and emotional negativity, I show how Turanskyj’s work visualizes dynamics of refusal to conform to neoliberal demands.