Storytelling and survival in the "Murderer's House": gender, voice(lessness) and memory in Helma Sanders-Brahms' Deutschland, bleiche Mutter

Date

2009-08-28T22:18:12Z

Authors

Reed, Rebecca

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Abstract

Helma Sanders-Brahms’ film Deutschland, bleiche Mutter is an important contribution to (West) German cinema and to the discourse of Vergangenheitsbewältigung or “the struggle to come to terms with the Nazi past” and arguably the first film of New German Cinema to take as its central plot a German woman’s gendered experiences of the Second World War and its aftermath. In her film, Deutschland, bleiche Mutter, Helma Sanders-Brahms uses a variety of narrative and cinematic techniques to give voice to the frequently neglected history of non-Jewish German women’s war and post-war experiences.

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New German Cinema, Deutschland, bleiche Mutter, Germany, Pale Mother, Vergangenheitsbewältigung, coming to terms with the past, New Subjectivity, West German women’s autobiographical films, gendered experiences of war, narrative cinematic techniques, intergenerational dialogue, Räuberbräutigam, Robber Bridegroom, postmemory, Second World War

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