Listening in/To Germany, Pale Mother

A newly restored version of Helma Sanders-Brahms’ 1980 film, Deutschland, bleiche Mutter (Germany, Pale Mother), was premiered in 2014 as a “Berlinale Classic”. This article reveals a complex composition of archival and (re)constructed sound that amplifies the film’s problematisation of the relationship between public history and private memory and the competing claims to authenticity and authority in telling the stories of the past.