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This essay argues that Sanjay Leela Bhansali's 2018 Bollywood historical film Padmaavat is part of a wider media-informational atmospherics of contemporary Hindu pride and Islamophobia, drawing on advertised energies of disaffection and ethnological stereotyping around the figure of the Muslim. In the process, it constructs a "double shift" Orientalist prism of race perception to view a splendid "Aryan" Hindu past as well as a dark interval of Islamic rule in India marked by a Semitic, Turko-Arabic pathology. The film is part of an overall Hindu nationalist project of constructing a moral memory (contra history) in the era of the digital image that can not only reinvent the past, but also re-texture and re-canvas it, making purported pictures of a glorious Hindu bygone appearing as not just nove, but also tactile and sensuous. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In film scholarship, historical film has been identified as a form that portrays events and experiences that took place in the past. By building on Caruth's concept of indirect representation, however, this article identifies a new historical film form that is not necessarily set in the past, but engages with questions regarding history, memory and historical representation. It conceptualizes this new form of 'historical essay film', and by analysing Voice of My Father, argues that rather than manifesting a desire to represent traumatic events directly, historical essay films refrain from the presumption that the medium of film can represent the reality of past events. To this end, they engage with past traumas indirectly through narratives that are set in the present day. The study further contends that the main thrust of historical essay films is to probe the discursive fields in which certain moments of the past are fixed, narrated and become predominant while others remain overlooked and unaccounted for. The article concludes with the claim that, as a consequence of their unconventional formal structures, historical essay films diminish the temporal distance between the past, present and future while also opening up new possibilities for rethinking what historical representation means. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The long, rich history of Francophone cinematic culture has been largely absent from the pages of French Historical Studies. The current issue offers a corrective by initiating dialogue between historians and film studies specialists, and this introduction lays a groundwork by briefly sketching intellectual and cultural contexts for the articles that follow. Brett Bowles, Christian Delage, and Thibault Guichard examine films that recover voices silenced by abuses of state power or antistate terror, adding to existing work on how visual media preserves evidence of violence and so broadening our understanding of how history is constituted. Vanessa Brutsche engages a rich literature on how cinematic fictions represent the past with an article that explains how two popular films of the 1970s married historical "truths" with contemporary cultural referents to reappraise the French past and challenge illusions of progress. Kamel Ben Ouanès and Patricia Caillé's overview of Tunisian cinema explores its complex relationship to state, civil society, and an international "Third Cinema" while reminding us how much Francophone cinema has become transnational in contexts of production and subject matter alike. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Manikarnika: The Queen of Jhansi is a recently released Indian historical biopic of Rani Lakshmi Bai. Through historical re-imagining, the film renders several potential social and political issues, which are topical and timely in contemporary India. The present article attempts to examine the topicality of the film. First, it discusses how it rekindles the female heroic tradition of India, which has been overshadowed due to the patriarchal mindset and historiography. Secondly, it explores how, through cinematic liberties, issues like gauraksha, Hindutva, and patriotism have been propagated. Thirdly, it argues how by foregrounding Dalits and Muslims, the film attempts to neutralise extremist Hindu prejudices, dominant in the hyper-nationalist climate of India. The article concludes that by recreating a crucial historical epoch and a legend, the film attempts to reinstate a secular heritage of India's heroic tradition to rekindle nationalistic and patriotic sensibility among the contemporary masses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on Stephen Prince's concept of "perceptual realism"' to examine the use of computer-generated images in two megahit Korean blockbuster films of 2014, The Admiral: Roaring Currents and Ode to My Father, this article underlines these films' impression of reality as the nexus of the complex intersections between Korea's national history and identity, and the industrial and aesthetic transnationality of Korean popular cinema. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In contrast to the internationally celebrated New Romanian Cinema, Aferim! (Radu Jude, 2015), set in the distant past, invokes the historical filmmaking tradition as represented by Sergiu Nicolaescu's historical epics, including references to the literary adaptations of the socialist era La moara cu Noroc / The Mill of Good Luck (Victor Iliu, 1957) and Moromeții / The Moromete Family (Stere Gulea, 1987). The article identifies notions of Romanian identity in relation to changing ideas of nationalism to show how Aferim! uses representations of violence as a means of illuminating and interrogating romantic-heroic visions of the history of the nation and encouraging national self-knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The cinematographic film, mainly the historical one, is without a doubt a historical document worth taking into consideration especially by the totalitarian regimes that are constantly looking for a good image. the use of the historical cinematographic film to support historiographical and political positions during the years of the totalitarian communist regime is not a surprising fact, especially since similar phenomena are present in other European totalitarian countries of the 20th century. the consequences are, however, extremely damaging to historiography and to the public in general, even if in its essence the approach is based on the historical truth which once again provides credibility to the regime. It is an example of how the historical past can be used to manipulate the interests of a political present in an authoritarian/totalitarian regime. At the same time, it is an appeal to leave history in the hands of the professionals, that is, to historians, and not to use history for political reasons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The practice of representing history on film brings the filmmaker into collision with a cluster of concerns around the authentic. While recent articles have considered the historical documentary and historical dramatisation, I seek to extend the debate into narrative fiction film set in historical periods. In this article, I discuss conflicting conceptions of authenticity. Through my own practice-as-research, I examine the decision-making within the preproduction of a historical drama (my short film,The Burning, 2016) in order to demonstrate the ways in which contradictory concepts of authenticity can coexist within a historical film project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses didactic and methodical aspects of the application of visual and audio-visual media in the educational process. It making selective use of media reflecting politico-social phenomena in the Soviet Bloc. It also focuses on posters, postage stamps and television production as historical sources reflecting modern history in particular. On the basis of an the analysis of the topics covered by these media from the Cold War Era, the paper recommends the explanation of both historical phenomena and the mechanisms of propaganda and antipropaganda in history teaching. The paper also mentions ideological, socialisation and propagandist contexts. The described approach gives rise to an effective alternative educational medium that, first and foremost, reinforces interdisciplinary co-operation between school history and media studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The debate over the advantages and limitations of film as a medium for communicating history has taken new directions in the twenty-first century. While scholars are increasingly open to a complementary model of history that incorporates a variety of traditional and unconventional genres, others are still concerned by the effects of narrative constraints and lack of historical rigor perceived in many feature films. As one of the means of gauging cinema's cultural status lies in classifying its self-awareness of formulaic conventions, it is indicative of new attitudes that directors have begun to understand themselves as cinematic historians, incorporating scholarly concerns into their own productions. By dramatizing the choices that directors must make in the process of producing film, film-makers critique the ways in which history can be altered or misrepresented. After briefly tracing the change in perception of the term ‘cinematic historian,’ this article analyzes Bollaín's (2010) filmEven the Rainby focusing upon its complication of the category of cinematic historian. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Hollywood cinema has given informal testimony to war, particularly World War II. Saving Private Ryan, a 1998 war film directed by Steven Spielberg, broke the naturalist and romantic model of this sub-genre. Based on the testimony of veterans, it is not a film about the development of a military operation; instead, it is a hyperealistic reproduction of combat and the daily rigors war. It gives audiovisual form to the individual memory and experience of veterans, who were not usually part of the institutional account of the war and its earlier portrayals on the silver screen. This paper offers a stylistic analysis of the sequence in Saving Private Ryan that is most applauded for its effect and artistic value: the D-Day landing on Omaha Beach. It describes the resources used in its planning, sound and editing. It shows how the expressive stylistic techniques shaped by S.M. Eisenstein are used to involve the film's audience in the fighting and in the feelings and reasoning of the soldier; in this case, Captain Miller. In the end, it manages to immerse the audience in the war, securing its commitment to the soldier, and enabling it to understand the source of his trauma. The analysis uses the method S.M. Eisenstein employed in two of his articles to convince his detractors of the value of the stylistic approach used in Battleship Potemkin (1925). It consists of a description of the expressive scheme behind the design of the shots and the fragments in the montage, and a comparison to those that precede or follow them. The overall style of the sequence and its expressive intentions are explained by way of this dialectical method, which also is used to pinpoint the moments of contrast and rupture that serve an emotional motive; namely, to translate the soldier's ordeal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on a true story,Glory Roadrecounts the story of the 1966 national championship Texas Western College basketball team and coach Don Haskins' decision to start, for the first time in tournament history, five black players. Contextualized by sociologist Patricia Hill Collins' concept of “new racism,” this article argues that filmmakers manipulated history in order to inflate Haskins' progressive convictions by omitting, augmenting, and fabricating pivotal events in the historical narrative. These ultimately pronounce a white savior at the center of history and marginalize black athletes, even in a story that ostensibly deals with their struggles for racial equality. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In recent years, historians and film scholars such as Robert Rosenstone, Robert Burgoyne, Natalie Zemon Davis and J.E. Smyth have developed valuable new approaches to the analysis of historical films. While their methods and conclusions differ, all provide nuanced accounts of the ways that certain films and filmmakers can, in Rosenstone's words, ‘intersect with, comment upon, and add something to the larger discourse of history out of which they grow and to which they speak’ (Rosenstone 2006, 39). This essay builds upon such works, and develops an innovative methodology by which a film's contribution to historical discourse can be examined at several points in its theatrical and non-theatrical life cycle. I focus on Oliver Stone's much-discussed Vietnam drama, Platoon. Combining an analysis of unpublished draft scripts (1984–86), promotion and reception materials from the time of the film's original 1986 release and special features included on its latest DVD incarnation, Platoon: 20th Anniversary Edition (2006), I demonstrate how this film has functioned as a canvas upon which numerous historical narratives have been written and re-written over a period of more than 20 years. In doing so, this essay both reveals the ways in which Platoon has operated as an ever-expanding archive of materials on recent American history and challenges existing understandings of this much-studied historical film. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The aim of this publication is to present developments in international historiography, looking into the research of films from a historical perspective. The change of approaches suggested by historians is reviewed, aiming to update similar research in Lithuania, involving the suggestions by history studies and other study programmes related to film history and research. This is undertaken with the consideration that the local academic historians' community has not sufficiently valued film research and its possibilities - film research has been a rather one sided affair. Films and TV productions are used to influence historic and historical images and to publicise history. At the same time the first research on historical representation in TV and cinema, factual and feature films is being carried out. But these isolated efforts have researched only history and its representation, leaving out the wider perspectives. In understanding this the article presents the main developments influencing film research from a historical perspective: "pre-scientific", whose echoes are also felt in contemporary work (Bolesław Matuschewski, Siegfried Kracaeur), the movement "films and history" (Paul Smith), sources of the "Paris school" (Marc Ferro), postmodern turn (Robert A. Rosenstone, Hyden White, John O'Connor and others) and elements of the most up to date research. The article states that the research of films by historians gathers speed in the 1960s and 1970s and the scrutinised problems become significant to the Lithuanian historians and the academic community who are interested in film research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At a cost of nearly $29 million, Christophe Gans's Le Pacte des loups/The Brotherhood of the Wolf (2001) was one of the most expensive French films ever made. Packed with stunning visual effects, long and carefully choreographed fight scenes, and elements of gothic horror and porn, the film has often been seen as an action-packed blockbuster made with the intention of rivalling Hollywood rather than a serious work in keeping with the auteurist ideals of French film-making. This reading of the film, however, obscures the fact that Le Pacte des loups probably has more in common with the French heritage film than with American action films, and that its subject matter - the French Revolution - is one of the most privileged subjects in French historical film-making. A closer reading of the film reveals that it functions to explore the nature of history and historical narrative, and particularly the relationship between history and cinema, and that it asserts the representational nature of all historical narratives, be they official histories or historical films. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article concerns the representation of slavery and decolonisation in historical film. Two films serve this purpose: Queimada! (Burn!) by the deceased Italian Marxist, Gillo Pontecorvo, and Sankofa by the 'accented' Ethiopian/American film-maker, Haile Gerima. The article addresses two concerns: first, whether these films contribute to the intelligibility of the past and, if so, do they suggest a different construct of agency and human possibility? Second, are they relevant to the contemporary period in world affairs, especially to North-South polarity? The author compares and contrasts the two films, emphasising the framing of slavery and its deployment as a trans-historical category in Queimada! Next he discusses nine scenes that comprise and narrate agency, the 'decisive moments' in the revolutionary process; its appropriation, decline and renewal in Queimada! The article concludes with Gerima and Pontecorvo's distinctive calls for solidarity and renewal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses three Spanish films made during the 1990's by three male filmmakers: ‘ Ay, Carmela’ (1990) by Carlos Saura, Land and Freedom, (1995) by Ken Loach and Libertarias, (1996) by Vicente Aranda. The three films are set during the Spanish Civil War and are concerned with the rewriting of recent Spanish history. The article focuses on the representation of female characters in these films. The three films echo the rapidly changing roles of women in Republican Spain in 1937–38 and they attempt to portray female characters as subjects and not objects. Nonetheless, this article argues that not all three films succeed in depicting women as discourse-mastering subjects: while Loach only uses the female characters as an instrument to document Spanish history, Aranda further places gender issues at the heart of his film. However, it is Saura who actually manages to represent a strong and independent female character as a subject with a discourse of her own. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I highlight a specific representation of the French star using Sacha Guitry. One way to consider the French male star is to focus on the image of the 'great man'. The master who incarnates political, military and artistic national genius is one of the key elements of a national imagination coming from the French Revolution and developed by the Third Republic. First, I focus on Guitry's performances in the comédies de boulevard he adapted from his own plays. In these films he embodies masters of language. These characters are very much like his public image: they have the same appearance, the same rhetorical skills, the same misogyny. The characters may be considered as masks that exhibit the figure of the author more than they hide it. In the second part, I focus on Guitry's historical films to show how they turn the stereotype of the master of language, a socially and politically distinguished position in French landscape, into the image of the great man incarnating national genius. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]