NonFiction
History on Film/Film on History
Full book description
History on Film/Film on History has established itself as a classic treatise on the historical film and its role in bringing the past to life. In this widely acclaimed fourth edition, Robert A. Rosenstone argues that to leave history films out of the discussion of the meaning of the past is to ignore a major means of understanding historical events.
This book examines what history films convey about the past and how they convey it, demonstrating the need to learn how to read and understand this new visual world. It integrates detailed analysis of films such as Schindler's List, Glory, October, and Reds, and advocates for the dramatic feature as a legitimate way of doing history. This edition includes a new Preface and a new chapter focusing on films produced in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, India, and East Asia.
By examining the codes and conventions of how these films tell us about the past and providing guidance on how to effectively analyze films as historical interpretations, History on Film/Film on History is an essential introduction to the field for students of history and film.
About the author
Robert A. Rosenstone
Robert A. Rosenstone is Professor Emeritus of History at the California Institute of Technology and a leading figure in the field devoted to studying the relationship between film and history. He has written two books on the topic, Visions of the Past: The Challenge of Film to Our Idea of History (Harvard, 1995) and History on Film/Film on History (Pearson, 2006, 2nd edition 2011), and has edited the breakthrough collection Revisioning History: Film and the Construction of a New Past (Princeton, 1995). More recently he served as chief editor for The Blackwell Companion to Historical Film (Blackwell, 2013), an anthology of original essays by scholars from around the world.
Rosenstone has participated in the production of several films, both dramatic features and documentaries. His acclaimed biography of John Reed, Romantic Revolutionary (Knopf, 1975), was used in part as the basis for the Academy Award-winning Reds, on which he worked as consultant. Other film involvements include writing the narration for the documentary The Good Fight (1983) and serving as consultant and talking head for several other films.
He is also the author of two novels, King of Odessa: A Novel of Isaac Babel (Northwestern, 2004) and Red Star, Crescent Moon: A Muslim and Jewish Love Story (Scarith, 2010), a book of poetry, Do People Look Up at the Moon Anymore? (Sharq Press, 2015), and the innovative memoir Adventures of a Postmodern Historian (Bloomsbury, 2016). Rosenstone is the Founding Editor of Rethinking History: The Journal of Theory and Practice, and in 1989 created the first film section for the American Historical Review. He has been a visiting professor at universities around the world, including Oxford, Manchester, Barcelona, the European University Institute, Kyushu University, the University of La Laguna, and Tolima University.
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