The Challenge of Film Considered as Historical Research

Media International Australia, 1996

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.

Film, History and Memory, 2015

North American Journal of Welsh Studies, Vol. 7 (2012), pp. 38-52.

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.

2008

, quondam scholar, teacher, and university president said, seeing the didactic usefulness of 'The Birth of A Nation', which first came to the screen in 1915. Famous propagandists were equally quick to perceive the importance of the new medium. Lenin and Trotsky saw its value for their political message. 'Of all the arts,' Lenin said, 'cinema is the most important instrument.' Reichminister for Propaganda, Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels, took control of the German film industry early on and turned feature films and the German Weekly Newsreels into masterpieces of the art of deception.' Scholar-president and political leaders who sought to move the great mass of their peoples-these men quickly saw the radically different uses of film for recalling the past. Since the early twentieth century, when amazing new devices for locomotion, communication and for increasing production and comfort suddenly broke through to the public consciousness, thinkers and users alike have tried to grapple with their long-term, often unintended effects. One of these new devices was, of course, the moving picture. Like the still camera earlier, it revolutionized the possibilities of representation and consequently deeply affected patterns of thought. The cinematograph was first used for public entertainment, but soon showed its potential as an information-providing device. Today, historians, like their students and the public, sit before cinema and television screens watching, being entertained by, and learning from filmed history in romanticized 'features' and seemingly objective documentaries. Seeing something on film often becomes 'being there', as Roland Barthes has said.2 Everywhere, history reported in film has been influential and there is firm evidence of its pedagogical effects.3

Film, History and Memory, 2015

The essay offers a survey of the literature concerning the use of cinematic texts in historical research, from the publication of Kracauer's classic From Caligari to Hitler to the most recent contributions. It singles out the principal tendencies shown by the scholars who engaged in this particular field of research such as: the use of raw unedited footage as a record of historical events and personalities; the analysis of institutionally sponsored film in order to gain insight into the motives of sponsoring institutions like governments and political parties, the idea that feature films might be indicators of the moral values, prejudices, ideas, and political and social tensions running through a society at a given time. The essay also offers an account of the major theoretical contribution by authors like Marc Ferro, Pierre Sorlin, and John E. O'Connor. The paper's ultimate purpose is to take stock of the progress made by scholars in this well-established and yet, in many respects, still controversial research thread. 'We need to study film and see it in relation to the world that produces it. What is our hypothesis? That film, image or not of reality, document or fiction, true story or pure invention, is history.' M. Ferro, Cinema and History (Detroit: Wayne State University, 1988), p. 29. Historians basing their research principally on cinematic texts may, at times, feel unease with regard to the epistemological foundations of their research. This is due to a number or reasons. First of all, to study films, or principally films rather than written documents, means to go against a long and illustrious tradition of historiographical studies which has normally privileged written texts over visual evidence as primary sources for historical research. Secondly, within the range of visual sources, historians have for a long time been especially suspicious of cinematic texts. Finally, a universally accepted, coherent and comprehensive methodology for studying film as a source for historical analysis has not yet been formulated. This awareness accounts for the title of the essay: cinema and history have had a very long engagement, but a proper wedding has yet to be celebrated. It is worth noting that the longterm diffidence of historians towards film is not entirely unreasonable. The use of cinematic texts as historical sources presents difficult theoretical problems with respect to their