Film and History

In the past three decades, due to the work of some distinguished historians, the discussion of film is being slowly integrated into Western historiography. However, while relatively few academic historians would deny today film’s ability to instigate awareness to and enrich the understanding of historical experiences, many fewer are willing – and able – to incorporate film analysis in their own research and teaching. This impasse is particularly apparent in the case of “historical films,” in which past events and experiences are reconstructed, invented and framed in varying degrees of sophistication. The convincing arguments that established film as a “legitimate” narrator of historical reality often fell short of explicating how film should be integrated into academic history discourse. This article reads Rosenstone and Parvulescu’s recent collection of essays A Companion to Historical Film as a demonstration of different approaches taken by contemporary historians in an attempt to meet this challenge. Within this context, it identifies four paradigms, each involves different premises about the nature of film’s realism, its role as an agent of social change, and its dialog with “conventional” (national, institutional, etc.) narration of the past. The analysis of these paradigms – and the ways they have been implemented by the contributors to A Companion to Historical Film – shows their potential contribution to the study of historical realities, as well as their weaknesses and limitations. Insightfully presenting and discussing these approaches, I argue, Rosenstone and Parvulescu’s volume is an important step forward in the ongoing endeavor to methodologically incorporate film analysis in the academic research of history.

Rethinking History, 2007

This article consists of an extended review of Robert Rosenstone's book, History on Film/Film on History (Pearson, 2006). The review evaluates three key contributions: first, the description of the development of a field of study dedicated to examining the relationship between film and history; second, Rosenstone's demand that history on film be judged not in relation to written history but as a valid and productive form of representation in its own right; and, third, the book's presentation of a taxonomy of the history film.

The Middle Ground Journal, 2023

Visual media inundates our world every day with moving images, ranging from series, feature films, and documentaries, to a few short seconds of TikTok or YouTube videos, making it one of the most prevalent ways people receive entertainment and information. Educators at all academic levels are often on the hunt for films to use in class on topics, searching for ways to make the historical importance of particular events even more poignant for students. Upon initial review of Scott C. M. Bailey's Approaching Recent World History Through Film: Context, Analysis, and Research, it is clearly evident this is a welcome pedagogical tool for teachers in the world history classroom because of the work the author does to analyze and contextualize the historical content of films. This book is far more versatile than that, however, as Bailey has also set out to provide an invaluable guide on how to use films as historical sources in research projects by equipping scholars with the analytical foundation to incorporate visual media into historical research methods. Bailey is unequivocal in his conviction that using films as historical sources can help us come to a deeper understanding about the history of the long twentieth century (from the late nineteenth through early twenty-first centuries). Visual media can be a powerful way to engage students and provide a better understanding of historical events, societies, and cultures. This is especially true of foreign films, which can offer unique and often unfamiliar perspectives that enable students to explore societies and cultures much different from their own. Indeed, films can help students understand that history is not a single, universal narrative but rather, different interpretations can depend on the time, place, and perspective of the filmmaker. For instance, the Japanese anime film Grave of the Fireflies (1988) can provide students with a Japanese civilian point of view on the atomic bombing carried out by the United States in 1945. Films can also serve as a medium to explore historical events in an accessible and engaging narrative structure students may find more appealing than a textbook. Examples abound, from All Quiet on the Western Front (1930, 1979, 2022) as an example of the brutality and futility of the Great War to Cuba and the Cameraman (2017) that uses the director's collected footage to examine the effects of forty years of Fidel Castro's rule on the lives of everyday citizens. Instructors using films can foster critical thinking skills by comparing a film's depiction of events such as those in Dunkirk (2017) with textual primary and secondary sources, and encouraging students to consider such issues as bias, perspective, historical accuracy, and fact and fiction in historical films. Bailey's book is a vital resource in engaging students in this way. Two key elements make the book particularly strong in its practical applicability: its global focus apparent in the selection of the films and its organization. An introduction defines important terms, discusses world historical interpretation, and identifies several of the conventions and assumptions that go along with different types of world history films. Delving further into analysis, Bailey also explores how to identify arguments in historical films and how to analyze their historical content and context. The conclusion provides ideas on incorporating films into historical

This article surveys an emerging tendency that I call the New Historicist Film, describing certain affinities between recent films and videos that refract themes common to avant-garde cinema, such as personal subjectivity, myth, and the nature of the cinematic experience itself, through the prism of historical narrative. New Historicist Films draw from diverse subjects and seemingly unrelated disciplines in an effort to understand the present through an inquisitive, often oblique examination of the past. Taken together, these films represent a turn from the diaristic, first-person impulse of the avant-garde to the world "out there," as it has been represented in primary documents, literary texts, and historical scholarship. In particular, this essay compares and contrasts the works of four filmmakers — David Gatten, Rebecca Meyers, Deborah Stratman, and Erin Espelie. My intention is to outline some of their shared thematic preoccupations, aesthetic predilections, and formal strategies, as well as provide context for their work in relation to both methodological shifts in historical writing and the history of avant-garde cinema.

2013

This course will familiarize graduate students with key methods, archival resources, and theoretical debates that pertain to film and media historiography. We will focus on what it means to think historically with and through moving images. What kinds of discourses on history can films represent? And what materials and practices do scholars enlist in order to situate films in relation to broader formations of society, politics, aesthetics, and modern culture?

Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, 2021

This essay reflects on the pedagogical value of integrating nontheatrical and useful cinemas into a standard film history survey course. It takes as its example my experiences teaching a one-semester survey titled, “International Cinema to 1960,” at a university in the United States. The essay suggests how looking beyond the narrative feature reorients film history in several ways: first, by highlighting alternative film production practices (such as government- and corporate sponsored nonfiction); second, by offering generative context for specific national film movements (such as the Golden Age of Mexican cinema and Italian Neorealism); and third, as a lens to contend with the history of European imperialism and the colonial gaze (i.e., travelogues, colonial film units). It argues that putting nontheatrical and useful cinemas in conversation with classic survey content offers a more dynamic history of cinema and becomes a vehicle for organically sparking important conversations about the Eurocentric, racial, and gendered limitations of the film canon—especially prior to 1960. Integrating nontheatrical cinemas creates a survey that actual surveys the scope of film history.