The Historical Film
History and Memory in Media
Published on 1. October 2000
Book
Paperback/Softback
360 pages
978-0-8135-2856-4 (ISBN)
Description
What is history? How do we represent it? How do our notions of history change over time? The essays in The Historical Film: History and Memory in Media probe the roles that cinema and television play in altering and complicating our understanding of historical events.
The book brings together representative examples of how both media critics and historians write about history as it is created and disseminated through film and television. The essays explore what is at stake culturally and politically in media history and how this form of history-making is different from traditional historiography. The volume is divided into four parts--Regarding History; History as Trauma; History, Fiction, and Postcolonial Memory; and History and Television--that progressively deepen our understanding of just how complex the issues are. Essays by top scholars analyze many different kinds of film: historical film, documentary, costume drama, and heritage films. The section on television is equally broad, examining phenomena as diverse as news broadcasts and Ken Burns's documentary The Civil War.
Contributors are Mbye Cham, George F. Custen, Mary Ann Doane, Richard Dienst, Taylor Downing, Gary Edgerton, Naomi Greene, Miriam Bratu Hansen, Sue Harper, Sumiko Higashi, Anton Kaes, Marcia Landy, Shawn Rosenheim, Robert A. Rosenstone, Pierre Sorlin, Maria Wyke, and Ismail Xavier.
The book brings together representative examples of how both media critics and historians write about history as it is created and disseminated through film and television. The essays explore what is at stake culturally and politically in media history and how this form of history-making is different from traditional historiography. The volume is divided into four parts--Regarding History; History as Trauma; History, Fiction, and Postcolonial Memory; and History and Television--that progressively deepen our understanding of just how complex the issues are. Essays by top scholars analyze many different kinds of film: historical film, documentary, costume drama, and heritage films. The section on television is equally broad, examining phenomena as diverse as news broadcasts and Ken Burns's documentary The Civil War.
Contributors are Mbye Cham, George F. Custen, Mary Ann Doane, Richard Dienst, Taylor Downing, Gary Edgerton, Naomi Greene, Miriam Bratu Hansen, Sue Harper, Sumiko Higashi, Anton Kaes, Marcia Landy, Shawn Rosenheim, Robert A. Rosenstone, Pierre Sorlin, Maria Wyke, and Ismail Xavier.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
New Brunswick NJ
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Unsewn / adhesive bound
Dimensions
Height: 231 mm
Width: 156 mm
Thickness: 23 mm
Weight
567 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-8135-2856-4 (9780813528564)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
MARCIA LANDY Marcia Landy is Distinguished Service Professor of English and film studies at the University of Pittsburgh. She is the author of many books, including The Folklore of Consensus: Theatricality and Spectacle in Italian Cinema, 1929-1943.
Content
Preface
Introduction
Regarding History
How to Look at an "Historical" Film
The Historical Film: Looking at the Past in a Postliterate Age
Making History
Historical Pleasures: Gainsborough Costume Melodrama
History as Trauma
Projecting Ancient Rome
"You Remember Diana Dors, Don't You?" History, Femininity, and the Law in the 1950s and 1980s British Cinema
The Presence of the Past: Rainer Werner Fassbinder's The Marriage of Maria Braun
Schindler's List is Not Shoah: The Second Commandment, Popular Modernism, and Public Memory
Walker and Mississippi Burning: Postmodernism versus Illusionust Narrative
History, Fiction, and Postcolonial Memory
Empire as Myth and Memory
Black God, White Devil: The Representation of History
Official History, Popular Memory: Reconfiguration of the African Past in the Films of Ousmane Sembene
History and Television
Information, Crisis, Catastrophe
History, the Eternal Rerun: On Crime Story
History on Television: The Making of Cold War, 1998
Ken Burns's Rebirth of a Nation: Television, Narrative, and Popular History
Interrotroning History: Errol Morris and the Documentary of the Future
Select Bibliography
Contributors
Index
Introduction
Regarding History
How to Look at an "Historical" Film
The Historical Film: Looking at the Past in a Postliterate Age
Making History
Historical Pleasures: Gainsborough Costume Melodrama
History as Trauma
Projecting Ancient Rome
"You Remember Diana Dors, Don't You?" History, Femininity, and the Law in the 1950s and 1980s British Cinema
The Presence of the Past: Rainer Werner Fassbinder's The Marriage of Maria Braun
Schindler's List is Not Shoah: The Second Commandment, Popular Modernism, and Public Memory
Walker and Mississippi Burning: Postmodernism versus Illusionust Narrative
History, Fiction, and Postcolonial Memory
Empire as Myth and Memory
Black God, White Devil: The Representation of History
Official History, Popular Memory: Reconfiguration of the African Past in the Films of Ousmane Sembene
History and Television
Information, Crisis, Catastrophe
History, the Eternal Rerun: On Crime Story
History on Television: The Making of Cold War, 1998
Ken Burns's Rebirth of a Nation: Television, Narrative, and Popular History
Interrotroning History: Errol Morris and the Documentary of the Future
Select Bibliography
Contributors
Index