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Dealing With Historical Movies In The History And English Classroom, Daniel Reynaud

Daniel Reynaud

Movies based on historical events can be of value to the teacher of History and English. Unlike documentaries however, they are not used as much as they might be in the History classroom, because as essentially fictional texts, they pose problems of interpretation for the historian. Given a correct understanding of how history and cinema interact, and how the cinema differs as a historical source from conventional records, the History teacher can make the most of movies as texts that reveal not so much what happened in history, but rather the importance of the event to later generations. Senior English …