© Columbia University Press
Cinema and History: Screening the Past
August, 2008
Paper, 144 pages,
ISBN: 978-1-905674-59-6
Wallflower Press
$22.00
/ £15.00
"This is a very useful book that provides a timely reminder of the complexity of the field of cinema and history ... The book has a dual focus on the discipline of film history, and on the representation of the past, and it combines these two in a thought-provoking and trenchant way. It asks all the right questions, and stimulates the reader to provide answers by indicating the most fruitful paths to follow." — Sue Harper , University of Portsmouth
"A readable, hugely informative volume and a valuable addition to the Short Cuts series ... Chopra-Gant has achieved the miraculous feat of scaling down the complex issues without falsifying and reducing the subject matter ... [He] has provided a rich critical milieu and methods that brilliantly illuminate the stakes, the character of, and limitations and potential of media's uses of the past." — Marcia Landy, University of Pittsburgh
"History. It's just one thing after another, right? Not according to this slim tome, which argues filmed history is more about storytelling than facts. Using a selection of movies, lecturer Chopra-Gant asks some big questions about the relationship between the filcks and reality. Does Rear Window tell us anything about '50s America? Do epics like Munich give a skewed view of true events? Smartly written, it's a solid primer which asks whose story is history?'" — Jamie Russell , Total Film