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Note to Students   Choosing a Film   Research Prompts   Project Guidelines  

The Filmic Context page deals with the "reel" part of your project, in contrast to the Historical Context page that deals with the "real."

Thus, the Filmic Context page is the complement to the Historical Context one. The purpose of the Historical Context page is to give users the "facts" and a way to do their own study of the history element. The purpose of the Filmic Context page is to focus on resources about the "fiction" that has been made with those facts in your film and in other representations.

The distinction between the two is not always firm and clear and, indeed, there can be overlap between them, so it's alright to repeat some reference material on both pages.

The Historical Context page has two parts: an essay and a list of resources. However, since you will do a scene analysis and an issue essay as separate pages, the Filmic Context will only have the list of resources.

Material appropriate for the Filmic Context section include scholarship on the film, on a book that is a source for the film, on the appropriate film genre, on other films or novels about the historical event, studies of the director, interviews with the director, and so forth.

Once again, it will not be unusual if some material is listed under both Historical Context and Filmic Context.

  • The annotations should cover the book/article/video/website's
  • Help a user to decide whether the item is worth a look for his or her research project.
  • Length: the review annotations are generally 50-150 words; in most cases make the annotations longer for the Historical Context and Filmic Context parts, say, 100-150 words. Toward the size of the synopses. In fact, think of your purpose as giving a healthy synopsis of the "argument" of your materials.
  • Your search will likely turn up books, articles, and videos not available locally, in which case you must try to obtain them through Inter-Library Loan. This can take time, so you must plan to submit requests early.
  • The Historical Context list and the Filmic Context list are each broken down into three parts:
  • There is no magic number of entries; some subjects may be truly huge, others slight; you will need to look in as many places and at as much material as you can and then make reasoned judgments.
  • Use MLA format for the citations (this Duke web site is good for format examples: https://www.lib.duke.edu/libguide/works_cited.htm)
  • This piece of the project will take a good bit of time; start early and work steady.
  • Put all important and striking quotes into sound bites right away. It's easier to do this now than to come back at the end. Think of including at least three sound bites from each of your annotated items. But the more the merrier. Include as many bites as the sources yield and your time allows. There is no such thing as too many.

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    Other Resources

    EJG logo Edward J. Gallagher
    Lehigh University Digital Library