Film as a source of history detailing how film became vital part of historical sources

1. FILM AS A
SOURCE OF
HISTORY
SEBIN MICHAEL
1ST YEAR MA HISTORY

2. History of Film
• In 1891 the Edison company successfully
demonstrated a prototype of the Kinetoscope,
which enable one person at a time to view moving
pictures.
• The first public Kinetoscope demonstration took
place in 1893
• The first to present projected moving pictures to a
paying audience were the Lumiere Brothers in
December 1895 in Paris France. They used a
device of their own making.
• At first the films were very short, sometimes only a
few minutes or less.
• By 1906, the principles of color separation were
used to produce so called natural color moving
images with the British Kinemacolor process.
• The Jazz Singer (USA,1927), used the WB
Vitaphone system, which employed a separate
record disc with each reel of film for the sound

3. TYPES OF
HISTORICAL
FILMS
• THE EPICS, those are historical film that
recreate past events, that are expensive and
lavish to produce. Epics often rewrite
history, suffering from inauthenticity
• THE BIOGRAPHICAL FILM, or biopics,
is a film that dramatizes the life of a non-
fictional or historically based person or
people
• THE TOPICAL FILM, which centered on a
particular incident or focus on a specific
period rather than on the grand narratives
of war, or emergence of a race or nation in
the form of epics
• THE WAR FILM, war film is a film genre,
is best defined as a movie in which a
fictionalized or fact based story

4. • The term coined by Hayden White in his essay Historiography and Historiophoty(1988)
• Historiophoty can be defined as the representation of history and our thoughts about it in
visual image and filmic discourse
• White arguing that historians using the verbal ability to share their thoughts about a
particular event, whereas the makers propagating their vision with the visual assistance
Historiophoty

5. Impact of
Film
• Films are expected to form beliefs,
influence opinions and change
attitudes, including towards topical
social issues
• Movies can have a significant impact
on Gender and Ethnic stereotypes,
change attitudes towards certain
groups of people and cause newly
formed opinions on various issues
• Movies create images of other
countries and stimulate interest in
them
• Expanding the basic knowledge of the
world around us.

6. Reconstructing the Past
• As a record of time and motion,
films preserve gestures, gaits,
rhythms, attitudes, and human
interaction in a variety of
situation
• Ambiguous scenes provide rich
material for studying social
history, but they require
complex interpretation and
investigation
• Films produce indelible images
of some of the twentieth
century’s great events
• Films reconstructing the social
problems with respect of past.

7. Screening
the Event
• Film can provide detail visuals of a particular
event
• Catching the untold causes of the event
• Change in the conventional view on a
particular event
• Unearthing the event with the help of
technology
• Film can only go so far towards creating an
absolutely accurate portrayal of the past

8. Problems in
Historical
Films
• Film can only go so far towards creating
an absolutely accurate portrayal of the
past
• Only focusing on head theme
• Historical accuracy is impossible due to
the nature of film production
• There are limits to the way historical
movies can create a narrative that will
satisfy historians
• Historical films need deeper level of
scrutiny
• A historical movie is not a historical lesson

9. Impact of
Technology
• The ability to digitally recreate
faces, bodies, and even dialogue is
experiencing some dramatic
improvement
• Preservation of film
• Highly distribution capacity than
a history book
• The use of VFX software’s like
Nuke, AAE, Maya etc, creating
the artificial possibilities

10. In Short
• Historiophoty is a term, that
describing the historical events or
opinion by using visual
representations
• Films influencing opinions or
even inject makers outlook, into
viewers mind
• Introducing new ideologies into
society
• Aids to understand situations of
decades
• Detailing the past with visuals
• Historical films need deeper level
of scrutiny
• Film can easily preserve and
distribute than a book

11. Smile Please
Its Your Turn…Thankyou…