230566 Screening the Past: British History on Film (S) (SoSe 2009)

Film – history fictionalised as story and visual image – remains a powerful medium of education; and the question is how film-makers try to reconcile their obligation to historical truth with the requirements of infotainment. Looking at a selection of tv and cinema dramatisations of British history up to the Napoleonic Wars, we will attempt to discuss both factual historical contexts and their cinematographical fictionalisation to analyse the ways in which national history has been popularised – and probably also instrumentalised – at various points in Britain’s film-making history.
The seminar will meet fortnightly, beginning on 17 April.

Material suggested for discussion includes:

The Brother Cadfael Mysteries, tv series, Carlton UK TV, 2004 (12th cent.)
Becket, starring P. O’Toole and R. Burton, 1964 (12th century)
the various tv and cinema versions of the life of Queen Elizabeth I (16th century)
The Madness of George III, dir. Nicholas Hytner, 1994 (c. 1788)
Amazing Grace, dir. Michael Apted, 2007 (1782-1807; abolition of slavery)

[Further suggestions are welcome but subject to my veto. The films should be produced or at least written and/or directed by Brits.]

N. B. Students are expected to revise the historical outlines of events adapted in these films on their own. We will not have time for a repetition of material from “British History 1”!

Credit can be obtained by a presentation-and-report (5-7 pp.) or by a term paper (10-15 pp.; cf. Modulhandbuch).