Temporal Displacement in Ulrike Ottinger’s Films

Whether campy adventure films set in exotic locales, explorations of Berlin subcultures, or experimental travelogs in Asia, the work of German filmmaker Ulrike Ottinger is permeated with a sense of being out of synch with the flow of time. Contextualizing her depictions of temporal displacement within German debates about “the synchronicity of the non-synchronous,” I argue that Ottinger resists linking temporal displacement to particular minority groups, portraying it instead as a condition of modernity itself. I use this reflection as an occasion to question the potential essentialism in discussions of queer temporality.