Film and History

Revisiting A Town Like Alice

by Christina Twomey

Australian Feminist Studies, vol. 21, no. 49, March 2006, pp. 85-102

‘Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory’: The Cinematic Adaptation of American Poetry

by Michael Devine

Adaptation 5.1 (March 2012): 1-17

This essay reconstructs a forgotten crisis in American letters and film: President Theodore Roosevelt's unpopular... more This essay reconstructs a forgotten crisis in American letters and film: President Theodore Roosevelt's unpopular campaign to make ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic’ the nation's poem in 1908 and the poem's popular film adaptation in 1911. As the cinematic response to poetry's failure as a national art, the Vitagraph film became a collectivist hymnal for the nation's dream of assimilation. Featured prominently in American poet Vachel Lindsay's pioneering work of film theory, The Art of the Moving Picture (1915), the adaptation effectively reasserted the popular roots of the otherwise genteel ‘Battle Hymn’ poem and by doing so helped to modernize poetry's communal function and the nation's literary tradition.

‘Precarious Boundaries: Affect, Mise en Scene and the Senses in Angelopoulos' Balkans epic.'

by Anne Rutherford

First published in Art and the Performance of Memory: Sounds and Gestures of Recollection. Ed. Richard Candida Smith. New York & London: Routledge, ‘Memory and Narrative’ series. Also published in Senses of Cinema 31 (2004).

Napoléon vu par Yves Simoneau. Filmische Biographie zwischen Mythos und Geschichte, in: Alexander Kästner/ Josef Matzerath (Hg.): Mehr als Krieg und Leidenschaft: Die filmische Darstellung von Militär und Gesellschaft der Frühen Neuzeit, Themenheft Militär und Gesellschaft in der Frühen Neuzeit 15,2 (2011), S. 399-434.

by Eric Piltz

The article deals with the (re)presentation of Napoleon in the TV mini series by Yves Simoneau, the use of legendary... more The article deals with the (re)presentation of Napoleon in the TV mini series by Yves Simoneau, the use of legendary tales and the ways of filming a biography between myth and history.

Making of a Peasant Industry: Telugu Cinema in the 1930s-1950s

by Srinivas SV

Children,'Horrific'Films, and Censorship in 1930s Britain

by annette kuhn

“She Makes Love for the Papers”: Love, Sex, and Exploitation in Hitchcock's Mata Hari Films

by Nora Gilbert

Von der Besonderheit biographischer Figuren. YOUNG MR LINCOLN als Genrefall

by Henry M. Taylor

Published in: Österreichische Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaften (ÖZG), vol. 8, no. 4, 1997, pp. 484—502

Defining the biographical character as the protagonist in biographical films, a subgenre of the historical fiction... more Defining the biographical character as the protagonist in biographical films, a subgenre of the historical fiction film, this paper seeks to elaborate generically specific problems of characterization and narration in the biopic. While being presented fictionally, the genre nonetheless has some, sometimes considerable, pretensions to historical truth (the life of a historical person, using authentic names) and is thus hybrid, forced to accommodate the fictional with the nonfictional, and thereby often producing stylistic tensions. One can observe, for instance, an aesthetic tendency somewhat reminiscent of, or related to, documentaries whose mode of reference differs fundamentally from that of fiction. Biographical characterization and figural presentation may also be flatter, emotionally removed and hence more objective than in the standard feature film. While referring to and drawing on the complex debate surrounding Young Mr Lincoln (1939), notably the collective 1970 text by Cahiers du Cinema, Ford's film is used here to exemplify typical generic traits and procedures which may be found in numerous biopics. To this end, a number of other films are also included in the discussion, presented within a framework comprising formal analysis and concepts deriving from film and literary theory, genre studies, narratology and speech act theory.

Le Cinéma n’est jamais né

by Gabriel Rockhill

Le milieu des appareils.  Ed. Jean-Louis Déotte.  Paris:  L’Harmattan, 2009, p. 187-211. Also available in the online journal Appareil 1 (2008).

The Flux of Domesticity and the Exotic in a Wartime Melodrama

by Chikako Nagayama

2009. Published in Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 34(2).

Tarih Öğretiminde Tarihsel Film Kullanımı

by Barış Çatal

http://www.ttk.org.tr/index.php?Page=Yayinlar&KitapNo=953

Kurgunun Gücü: Tarih Öğretiminde Tarihsel Film Kullanımı

Gerek tarihsel filmler ve tarihi kendisine konu... more Kurgunun Gücü: Tarih Öğretiminde Tarihsel Film Kullanımı

Gerek tarihsel filmler ve tarihi kendisine konu edinen televizyon dizileri gerekse tarihsel bilginin bizatihi kendisi, birer kurgu öğesi olmanın ortaklığını paylaşırlar. Sadece kurgu öğesi olmaları yönüyle bile ele alındığında, tarihsel bilgi ve tarihsel filmler/diziler arasındaki ilişki merak uyandırıcı yönüyle karşımızdadır.

The Director as an Effective Historian

by Michael Farrell

In Fall 2011 I had the fortunate opportunity to take Great Directors of Film, a class at my current college of Ave Maria University.  This is my first essay in the class, which explains how the director of a film is a good historian based on the unique power he has of influencing the audiences of the films he creates.

'From “Over There” to Virtual Presence: Camp de Thiaroye – The Battle of Algiers – Hidden'

by Hamish Ford

in Sandra Ponzanesi & Marguerite Waller (eds.) Postcolonial Cinema Studies, London: Routledge, 2011, pp. 63-77.

‘Tracking Titokowaru Over Text and Screen: Pākehā Narrate the Warrior, 1906-2006’, in New Zealand Cinema: Interpreting History. Edited by Alistair Fox, Barry Keith Grant, and Hilary Radner. Bristol: Intellect UK, 2011, pp. 135-152.

by Annabel Cooper

‘The New Zealand Wars: Introduction’ and ‘Ngā Pakanga Nunui ō Aotearoa/The New Zealand Wars’, in James E. Bennett and Rebecca Bierne (eds.), Making Film and Television Histories: Australia and New Zealand. I.B. Tauris, London, 2012, pp. 65-66; 79-84.

by Annabel Cooper

‘The New Zealand Wars: Introduction’ and ‘Ngā Pakanga Nunui ō Aotearoa/The New Zealand Wars’, in James E. Bennett and Rebecca Bierne (eds.), Making Film and Television Histories: Australia and New Zealand. I.B. Tauris, London, 2012, pp. 65-66; 79-84.

by Annabel Cooper

The Indian of the North. Western Traditions and Finnish Indians

by Hannu Salmi

in Hollywood’s Indian. The Portrayal of Native Americans in Film. Edited by Peter C. Rollins and John E. O’Connor. The University Press of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky 1998, p. 39-57.

The articles focuses on Finnish westerns, made in the 1950s and 1960s. It can be read in Google Books, follow the link... more The articles focuses on Finnish westerns, made in the 1950s and 1960s. It can be read in Google Books, follow the link below.

Introduction: The Mad History of the World

by Hannu Salmi

published in Historical Comedy on Screen: Subverting History with Humour. Ed. Hannu Salmi. Bristol: Intellect, 2010: 7-30.

‘History is about the most cruel of all goddesses’, wrote Friedrich Engels in 1893, ‘she leads her triumphal car over... more ‘History is about the most cruel of all goddesses’, wrote Friedrich Engels in 1893, ‘she leads her triumphal car over heaps of corpses, not only in war, but also in “peaceful” economic development.’ In Engels’s view, history is a cruel tragedy, and the conception of history as something profoundly tragic has made our image of the past grim and joyless. Although one might assume there would be plenty of amusement to be found in the past, historians rarely laugh at the objects of their study. This collection of essays is devoted to exploring the comic treatment of history on screen.

More in Google Books. Follow the link below!

Fellini's Satyricon; decadent?

by Stefano Moschini

The aim of this paper is to understand what can Fellini’s adaptation of Petronius’ Satyricon tell us about the... more The aim of this paper is to understand what can Fellini’s adaptation of Petronius’ Satyricon tell us about the classical reception of Rome in Italy during the Late Sixties. This study will have as a point of reception the critical response of the film. As the Satyricon’s critics often use the word decadence and others from the same lexical field; we can observe a certain dissonance between film’s text and the generated meaning by critics relating to the theme of decadence.

Re-Writing European History in the Cinema (2011)

by Laurence Raw

A review-essay on how recent films have dealt with the issue of adapting history for contemporary audiences. A review-essay on how recent films have dealt with the issue of adapting history for contemporary audiences.