Visions of the Past: The Challenge of Film to Our Idea of History

by Robert A. Rosenstone

Book Overview

Can filmed history measure up to written history? What happens to history when it is recorded in images, rather than words? Can images convey ideas and information that lie beyond words? Taking on these timely questions, Robert Rosenstone pioneers a new direction in the relationship between history and film. Rosenstone moves beyond traditional approaches, which examine the history of film as art and industry, or view films as texts reflecting their...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0674940989
• ISBN13: 9780674940987
• Release Date: August 1998
• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.5" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

A historian on film

Professor Rosenstone started writing on the subject of film when two of his own books were used as the basis for films, one a documentary, the other a hollywood feature. This book collects his essays, and in doing so shows his evolution from a historian writing/speaking about films in a somewhat negative light to one who realises the advantages and limitations of both media. This text showing one historian's changing opinion offers an excellect resource which helps us not only to understand the topic, but the histiography of it. Other books on this topic are often made up of single essays by historians who though maybe experts in their own field have not delt with the issue of the historical film as thoroughly as Prof. Rosenstone.