Women at work: reflections on social identity and the private self in 'Die Polizistin' (2000), 'Willenbrock' (2005) and 'Steigerlied' (2013)

While commonly rejecting the label 'East German film director' , Andreas Dresen sets much of his work in the eastern half of Germany and engages frequently with the legacy of the GDR. In 2013, he participated in a television documentary project "16 x Deutschland" for the German TV channel ARD, which consisted of short films representing each of the German "Bundesländer". In focusing on Brandenburg in "Steigerlied", Dresen elected to follow Dani Kuboth during her working day at an open-cast mine in the Lausitz. Commenting on his choice, Dresen explained he felt working people were under-represented in the media and such mines remained a central feature of the Brandenburg landscape. What he omitted to say was that, for both ideological and economic reasons, women working in traditionally male domains were the norm within the GDR; Dani may seem unusual in 2013, but she is part of a reality stretching back over sixty years. Taking Dani as a starting point, this chapter explores representations of women at work within Dresen' s oeuvre, focusing on three films ("Die Polizistin", "Willenbrock" and "Steigerlied") in particular. It analyses how work is shown to provide a public identity for women and to afford them a private sense of self, and examines how this once normal experience is now challenged by the gaze of individual male characters and, ultimately, by Dresen himself.