From Margins to the Center Through the Film Lens: Gender and Turkish-German Cinema

Abstract

This study explores gender roles in Turkish-German Migrant Cinema as created by two directors, Kutlug Ataman and Fatih Akin. Informed by its predecessors, Yilmaz Guney and Rainer Werner Fassbinder, who were among the first to explore the marginalization of immigrants in post-War Germany, the current Turkish-German wave of Migrant Cinema explores issues of memory, border crossing, third space, masculinity in crisis, homosexuality, assimilation, integration, and women as the embodiment of the homeland. Utilizing mainly feminist and feminist film theory, along with Marxist and Marxist Feminist theories as well as elements from Queer Cinema, I analyze the depiction of male, female, gay, and lesbian gender roles in three films: <italic>Lola and Billy the Kid</italic> (Ataman), and <italic>Head-On</italic> and <italic>The Edge of Heaven</italic> (Akin). In contrast to Ataman, who tackles gender and racial stereotypes head-on and places his characters' futures firmly in Germany, Akin's creates male and female characters whose quest to self journey take them back to motherland Turkey. Both directors work in the Turkish-German Migrant Cinema context of melodrama, although Akin might be judged the more successful in pushing the boundaries while conforming to the classical conventions of popular movie-making. Taken together, these films provide increased visibility to underrepresented gender categories in the immigrant context while simultaneously catering to the heterosexual gaze and thereby appealing to mainstream audiences.