History 200: History and Film

History 200 Introduction Lecture

Slide 1: Course introduction for History 200 History and Film Slide 2: Course Author Hi my name is David Schweitzer and Im the author of this course History and Film. I come from this part of Ontario and have received my BA and MA from the University of Guelph. In order to qualify for my PhD in British and Irish history, I pursued it at the University College of London, in London England where I lived for a number of years before returning to Ontario and to this part of the world to teach history at universities here. My history and professional interests relate to British, Irish and European history and, of course, the intriguing area of the relationship between film and the study of history. Slide 3: Course Introduction This course has a short title--History and Film. One of the things I find fascinating about this area is the enormous number of subjects which such a short title can involve and we will have time to investigate some of them in this course. History films have often been criticized by academics and others as inaccurate depictions of the past, yet there is no escaping that block-buster history filmsdocumentaries, dramas, even comedies, and so forth are increasingly shaping our understanding of historical events and of people in the past. This is especially true in our age of visual entertainment which, of course, includes DVDs, television and the cinema. The various controversies that erupt over various historical films themselves show the central role films play in making history accessible even in everyday life. Many people learn much of the history they know from either television or the movies. Even adventure and drama films can be a legitimate way of studying history. Even though they may be largely fictional, we can examine what history films convey about the past, how they convey it and this demonstrates that we need to learn how to read and understand this new visual world. This in turn means we will be briefly looking at various types of films coming from different countries, some will be American, some will come from European countries. The point being, that they are made in different times in different places under different political systems and in a different historical age. Dramatic feature films can also include he so called bio film or biography film. Different types of films could include documentaries, musicals, dramas, even comedies; theyre all examples of different types of film. People working as filmmakers sometimes work as historians as well. An example, consider how many films have been made concerning the Holocaust. Persons making these films set out to tell a story but that storys also related to European history. Part of what we will be doing will be to relate traditional history to this film history to see if they connect and how they connect. Traditional written history itself has changed a great deal over the past 50 years by using new methodologies and engaging in a new understanding of humanity. However, history is about change, about how the world has changed. The way we study history has also changed formally and informally. The moving picture has been with us for over 100 years now and although it is largely considered a form of entertainment, it is also the means by which many people have learned what they understand about history. Our course will be largely about how people learn history through film and to consider what film adds to our understanding of the past. What I find interesting about this whole subject is the efforts we can make to understand how real history can be understood
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through reel history. We will see that filmmakers who are also historians have several problems to grapple with to tell the story in an acceptable way, at least in an acceptable way historically. Some questions we will be asking: How do you actually tell the past? How do you show a past world which is now vanished? And how do you show it accurately? How can we understand the generations of filmmakers that came before us? These sorts of questions are different from the questions that would be asked in a film study course or in a cultural studies course. These questions are particular and special to the relationship between history and film. In this sense then, we can see the past but how true is the picture that we get about the past? Can film tell the truth about history? Can film tell the truth about history any more than books can tell the truth about history? Since the early days of cinema, films set out to do justice to history. Many films were on historical subjects. Has film lived up to its promise of being able to study history in a new way? Do depictions of history on the screen really count as history? Do they contribute to our knowledge of the past? Can any film be taken seriously as history? These are the sorts of questions well be thinking about when studying films in this course and when discussing them. Slide 4: Objectives for Students In this course, I hope that all students will obtain the following objectives and I hope that students will: Consider new ways of thinking about history. Discover new ways of thinking about history. Develop skills of critical analysis. Learn about film as a valid form of history. Think about how film versions of history involve our emotions and develop our interests and influence our beliefs about the past. Explore how film itself often exerts a historical influence upon events. Assess how the teaching of history is brought to life by using films, whether those films are feature drama films, biographies, comedies, musicals, etc. I hope that students will find themselves studying how when film is used as instructional material students should acquire sensitivities and critical skills of the sort used when studying print-based histories. Slide 5: Study Suggestions To conclude this brief introduction, Ive got a few study suggestions as to how you might do very well in this course;,at least I hope you will. What I suggest is that you be sure to read the assigned pages from the text book and other assigned reading material before listening to the audio presentations. Be sure to complete all of the assignments and the activities. Be sure to participate regularly in discussions because discussions are a very important part of this course and they serve as a forum for students to exchange their thoughts and ideas and talk about those ideas regarding films in the course. I suggest that you approach the online discussions as you would any live tutorials or seminars or discussion meetings in any other course. Be there at the beginning of the discussion and stay until the end of the discussion time window. You should try to contribute regularly and not wait until the last day or two. That way other students have a chance to read and respond to your ideas and you can gain extra insights from what others have to say. Above all I think you should try to engage in the course on a regular basis. Work to a schedule. Try to set a special time aside when others are least likely to disturb you and above all, please remember, to stop and smell the flowers along the way. Keep in mind that you should be enjoying the course material and the films which youll be watching. You can learn and be entertained at the same time, its quite permissible and the people who made those films worked very hard to do so. It is my hope that everyone enjoys this course and enjoys learning about history and film.

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