Film as a way of representing history

In the polish academic internet magazine Kultura i Historia one can find the article by Piotr Witek (PhD on the Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin) about film as a one of the most important contemporary ways of representing history. The text is available in english in the Creative Commons licence, so it is free to copy, download, share and mix (with atribution to the author and only for no commercial purposes).

As Piotr Witek writes in the text titled Film as one of the most important contemporary ways of representing history. Problems of teaching methodology of history, quite often professional historians disagree that film may generate history (Lino Micche, Michel Foucault for example) and what follows can not constitute an alternative for historiography (written history). According to them films are fictious tales, having not much in common with what a historian deals with. Sometimes documentary film as a genre is accepted, yet only as historical source.

Film can be a source of a historical awareness

According to author, maybe it is high time to admit that film histories are beyond the control of academic historians. Evaluation criteria that have been worked out for written historiography can not serve the purpose of evaluation of audio-visual narration. Very often film creates a historical world that written academic historiography can not compete with. That is why working out new criteria serving evaluation and analysis seems to be necessary.

To read more, please visit the original site.

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Kategorie: Formy upamiętnienia / In english / Telewizja i kino / Świadomość historyczna