Below is a series of questions that can be used as prompts to stimulate discussion or to gather information for research projects. The questions are divided into two sets: General Questions about History and Specific Questions about Film and History. The questions in each set are in no particular order and no doubt are not exhaustive. But their purpose is to help provide some focus for investigating the relation between film and history by suggesting the kinds of questions that should be asked.
General Questions | Specific Questions
Specific Questions about Film and History
- What is your definition of "cinematic historian"? How do movies make "us" (that is, as "citizens," as members of a group)?
- What historical people and subjects have film-makers chosen to treat?
- Who and what hasn't been treated?
- What do film-makers do when they treat historical subjects?
- Why do film-makers treat historical subjects? What is their "agenda"?
- What do films about history tell us about the past?
- What do such films tell us about the time in which they were made (their present)?
- Why was a particular film made at a particular time?
- What cultural work do such films do in future time, after they are made?
- Why have some such films become classic?
- How do such films contribute to our knowledge of the past? Of the present?
- How do such films influence the future?
- How do such films "make history"?
- What questions or answers did the film-maker bring to the film-making?
- What questions or answers does an audience take away from such films?
- What is the relation between "fact" and "fiction" in such films?
- How do such films deal with "evidence" when it is there?
- What if there is little or no evidence?
- What role does/should "creative license" play in historical films?
- How did the film-maker "interpret" the facts of the historical subject?
- What constitutes acceptable fictionalizing in such films?
- What role does/should "speculation" play in such films?
- What role does/should entertainment play in such films?
- How do such films compare to other versions of history in film and other media?
- Do we learn something about history from film that we can't from other media?
- Is there such a thing as "historical truth," especially in films about history?
- Do films qualify to be called "history"? Can film-makers be called "historians"?
- Does creative imagination destroy authenticity?
- What do professional historians think of such films?
- Why do some historical films trouble some professional historians?
- Why aren't professional historians more involved in making such films?
- Why should people interested in American history see such films?
- What can we learn about history or the making of history through such films?
- To what extent do such films present history with "integrity"?
- When is a film-maker "responsible" when dealing with historical subjects? When irresponsible?
