Throughout the twentieth and twenty first centuries, feature films rather than books have been the medium from which many people have gained knowledge of history and a consciousness of the past. This course will address the issue of how we can assess and evaluate the contribution of popular film to our sense of the past. How have popular feature films represented, reconstructed and interpreted the past? What can film do that a history book cannot? It will look at an array of film genres: historical feature film, biopic, docudrama, animation, musical. A number of specific films will be examined (1) as representations or interpretations of history; (2) as forms of evidence for social, cultural and political history; and (3) in the context of the history of the film industry.

One lecture and one tutorial, plus up to three hours for film viewing each week.

Lectures will be streamed