“Overall, this work offers a serious and scholarly overview of several genres of historical film and would make a useful addition to academic collections in particular.” (Reference Reviews, 1 June 2014)
“Ultimately, this important collection will prove a useful and accessible resource for researchers and pedagogues both and deserves to be a fixture in the reading lists of students of history as well as film and cultural studies. It would certainly be useful to hear what historians have to say about these analyses and how those in that discipline are coping with the idea that dramatic recreations, fictions and documentaries might be treated seriously for the theses they present on the experience and understanding of the past.” (Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 1 March 2014)
“Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty.” (Choice, 1 August 2013)
“Rosenstone and Parvulescu appropriately invite us to re-consider the relationship between history and film, enlisting all the best names in the field for this excellent and timely Companion to the Historical Film.”
―Claudio Fogu, University of California, Santa Barbara
“Embracing an impressive array of perspectives on feature films from across the world, this Companion will become an authoritative work of reference for anyone interested in how film represents, and even rethinks, history.”
―Maria Wyke, University College London
From the Inside Flap
The first comprehensive collection of perspectives in a growing field of research, this essential volume seeks to answer questions that lie at the heart of our response to the genre. How does a narrative history film speak about the past? What does it reveal about the generation creating it? How can we tell its fictions from its truths? Can popular entertainment of this kind also be a serious purveyor of historical knowledge and understanding? Featuring contributions from international scholars in the fields of History, Film Studies, Anthropology, and Cultural and Literary Studies, this collection offers a variety of interdisciplinary approaches.
A rich diversity of themes is taken into consideration, ranging from the nature of cinematic truth and the poetics and politics of the history film, to its interplay with written accounts of the past and its place in the classroom. The essays tackle inclusive subjects, such as how the form developed in different political contexts, alongside more focused assessments of individual films and auteurs. Prefaced with an introductory survey of the field by its two distinguished editors, this new Companion is a notable contribution to the field.
From the Back Cover
The first comprehensive collection of perspectives in a growing field of research, this essential volume seeks to answer questions that lie at the heart of our response to the genre. How does a narrative history film speak about the past? What does it reveal about the generation creating it? How can we tell its fictions from its truths? Can popular entertainment of this kind also be a serious purveyor of historical knowledge and understanding? Featuring contributions from international scholars in the fields of History, Film Studies, Anthropology, and Cultural and Literary Studies, this collection offers a variety of interdisciplinary approaches.
A rich diversity of themes is taken into consideration, ranging from the nature of cinematic truth and the poetics and politics of the history film, to its interplay with written accounts of the past and its place in the classroom. The essays tackle inclusive subjects, such as how the form developed in different political contexts, alongside more focused assessments of individual films and auteurs. Prefaced with an introductory survey of the field by its two distinguished editors, this new Companion is a notable contribution to the field.
About the Author
Robert A. Rosenstone is Professor Emeritus of History at the California Institute of Technology. His recent scholarship has focused on the overlapping topics of new narrative forms and history’s relationship to the visual media. He has published a dozen books, including Romantic Revolutionary: A Biography of John Reed (1975) , Mirror in the Shrine: American Encounters in Meiji Japan (1988), and King of Odessa: A Novel of Isaac Babel (2005). His works on film include Visions of the Past: the Challenge of Film to Our Idea of History (1995), Revisioning History: Film and the Construction of a New Past (1995), and History on Film / Film on History (2006, 2nd edition 2012). He created the film section of the American Historical Review and has lectured around the world.
Constantin Parvulescu is research fellow at the Institute for Culture and Society at the University of Navarra. He is the author of Orphans of the East: Postwar Eastern European Cinema and the Revolutionary Subject, Indiana University Press, 2015, and has published several articles on the relationship between cinema, history, and political and economic dicsourse.
Wow! eBook
