'Murderer's House' - University of Victoria

narratives” to women‟s perspectives and underrepresented voices and to deconstruct the
idea of a homogenized authoritative record of the past. Standard historical accounts of
war, which have tended to dominate and determine historical memory, are concerned
with military events, concepts of victory and defeat and filled with images of combat and
destruction. These narratives are often bolstered and perpetuated by mainstream cinema
such as in the Kriegsfilme discussed in Chapter 1. Personal memories tend to offer a
different perspective to these popular images. Personal histories, especially those of
women as a traditionally historically disenfranchised group, must be articulated and
studied in order to guard against a unified telling of history, based on the exclusion of
non-hegemonic voices.
In the film script that accompanies her film, Sanders-Brahms explains that she
combined her private memories of the war with documentary images of that period in
order to create a differing perspective of German history and to work through her own
traumatic personal recollections:
Mir haben die Kriegsfilme mit Pyrotechnik nämlich nicht gefallen. “Steiner I”
zum Beispiel, ein 15-Millionen-Projekt, viel Geld für Schlachtfelder, Panzer,
Explosionen – und dann war es doch nur Kinokrieg mit Piffpaff und
Tomatenketchup-Blut. Möglicherweise so, wie sich die Generäle den Krieg
vorstellen, wenn sie ihn planen als groβes Räuber-und-Schanditz-Spiel mit
tödlichem Ausgang für ein paar Millionen: so müβte der Krieg eigentlich sein,
wie die Pyrotechnik ihn macht. Aber aus meinen Erinnerungen, wuβte ich, so war
er nicht. Und als ich die Dokumentaraufnahmen sah und wiedersah, wuβte ich: so
war der Krieg, den ich gesehen habe in den ersten Jahren meines Lebens, das
waren die Bilder, die manchmal immer noch in meinen Träumen auftauchen und
die ich zu bewältigen versuche, indem ich diesen Film mache. (Film-Erzählung
118) 28
28 “Namely, I did not like war films with pyrotechnics. “Steiner I,” for example, a 15 million project, a lot
of money for battlefields, tanks, explosions – and then it was still movie-war with „Bang! Bang!‟ and
tomato ketchup blood. Possibly they reflected how generals imagined war, when they plan it as a huge
game of robbers and desecrators with fatal consequences for a few million: this is the way the war would
actually be, the way pyrotechnics make it. But based from my memories, I knew it wasn‟t like that. And
when I saw and saw again the documentary footage I knew: this is how the war was that I saw in the first
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