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'Murderer's House' - University of Victoria

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elationship. Through its subjective autobiographical perspective, the film is able to<br />

access the public space <strong>of</strong> German history. As Everett explains:<br />

Through the intimate subjective language <strong>of</strong> autobiography this film is exploring<br />

far wider social and political issues. Sanders-Brahms‟s quest for identity,<br />

articulated through her subjective exploration <strong>of</strong> the mother-daughter relationship,<br />

discovers in her mother‟s private experience a point <strong>of</strong> intersection between the<br />

personal, domestic space <strong>of</strong> home, and the external, political space <strong>of</strong> fascism and<br />

war. The merging <strong>of</strong> the personal and political, that is characteristic <strong>of</strong> the<br />

[autobiographical] genre, <strong>of</strong>fers a path by which traditionally marginalized,<br />

voiceless women can actually enter into history, can penetrate the phallocentric<br />

power structures <strong>of</strong> the public realm. (133)<br />

As has been shown in this chapter, one <strong>of</strong> the most striking ways Sanders-Brahms<br />

merges the personal and political in her exploration <strong>of</strong> her mother‟s gendered experiences<br />

<strong>of</strong> war is to alternate archival footage with re-enacted scenes <strong>of</strong> events in her mother‟s<br />

life. The effect <strong>of</strong> these confrontations is that they historically contextualize the fiction<br />

occurring onscreen while simultaneously giving a social context to the historical events<br />

depicted. In this way, Sanders-Brahms succeeds in imbuing memory in her film with a<br />

“texture which is both social and historic” (Bommes and Wright 256).<br />

72

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