How do heritage films extend, or delimit, the possibilities of historical

How do heritage films extend, or delimit, the possibilities of historical representation?

Rob Stone, University of

Birmingham

How do heritage films extend , or delimit, the possibilities of historical representation?

Historical representation in heritage films is extended through illustration, example, everyday detail (costumbrismo), relevance to present

(allegory, foreshadowing), realising the myth

(‘getting to know’ famous figures and ‘experiencing’ specific events such as battles)...also star discourse, generic conventions, narrative ploys...and also reception (entertainment and education)...

How do heritage films extend, or delimit , the possibilities of historical representation?

Historical representation in heritage films is delimited by narrow subjectivity on events and people, revisionism (for a nationalist cause, for example), by the construction of a distorting mirror on the present (false allegory) for political ends,...mythologising the real (mythopaeia)...also star discourse, generic conventions, narrative ploys...and also reception (receptiveness of audience, foreknowledge or its lack, suiting ‘the mood’ or not...

How do heritage films extend, or delimit, the possibilities of historical representation ?

Roots of Europe in history...and its break-up?

Heritage cinema is related to myth (especially those of nationhood). A myth is an enduring narrative - how does it contribute to the idea of

Europe?

Myth includes and enables the coming to terms with trauma


History

Myth

Historical representation

Narratives of nationhood

Heritage cinema

History


‘Heritage [is] “a project”, if not a conspiracy or a plot that at the very least is a strategy [...]. It is a

“bid for hegemony”, a way of using knowledge in the service of power.’

- Raphael Samuel, Theatres of Memory, London and New York: Verso. 1994, 243.


‘In a consumer-led society, in which everything has its price, and market values are unchallenged,

[heritage] ‘traffics’ in history and ‘commodifies the past.’

- Raphael Samuel, Theatres of Memory, London and New York: Verso. 1994, 242.


Heritage reclaims the ‘folk’ - a Romantic gesture!

Rewrites or at least reorders the past from a specific perspective

Cements basis of present-day endeavour, justifying same

Reframes future, allows for claims of tradition, symmetry, destiny

Creates a ‘theme park’ representation of history, traditions, customs and values


History

Myth

Historical representation

Narratives of nationhood

Heritage cinema

History

Memory


‘We do not remember, we rewrite memory much as history is rewritten.‘

- Chris Marker, Sans soleil


Heritage film today is ‘an important space for playing out contemporary anxieties and fantasies of national identity, sexuality, class and power.’

Andrew Higson, ‘Re-presenting the National Past; Nostalgia and Pastiche in the Heritage Film’ in Fires Were Started: British

Cinema and Thatcherism, ed. Lester Friedman, Minneapolis and London: University of Minneapolis Press and UCL press, 1993,

113.


History - Memory and rewritten memory

Myth - Imagination

Historical representation - Rewritten history

Narratives of nationhood - Anxieties and fantasies

Heritage cinema


Heritage cinema offers ‘no critical historical perspective.’

-

Andrew Higson, ‘Re-presenting the National Past; Nostalgia and Pastiche in the Heritage Film’ in Fires Were Started: British

Cinema and Thatcherism, ed. Lester Friedman, Minneapolis and London: University of Minneapolis Press and UCL press, 1993,

113.


Heritage cinema ‘call(s) forth and playfully betray(s) a popular knowledge of the European past beyond the versions sanctified by official history [...]. Thus films are first and foremost symptomatic of the contemporary imagination, offering unfamiliar takes on familiar myths.’

Belén Vidal, ‘Classic Adaptations, Modern Reinventions’, Screen 43:1, 2002, 5.


Heritage cinema ‘has provided a space for marginalised social groups, a sense of putting such people back into history.‘

Richard Dyer, ‘Heritage Cinema in Europe’ in Encyclopedia of European Cinema, ed. Ginette Vincendeau, London: Cassell,

1995, 205.


Historical imagery is ‘a dispositif that constitutes, through an appeal to memory and identification, a special form of address, at once highly individual and capable of fostering a sense of belonging.’

- Thomas Elsaesser, European Cinema Face to Face with Hollywood, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2005, 21.


History - Memory and rewritten memory

Myth - Imagination

Historical representation - Rewritten history

Narratives of nationhood - Anxieties and fantasies

Heritage cinema - Genre


Heritage cinema ‘constitutes a ‘genre’ only in a loose sense’ - high budgets, historical setting, high production values, A-list directors, stars, polished lighting and camerawork, many changes of decor and extras, well-researched interior design and classical or classical-inspired music.

-

Ginette Vincendeau, ‘Film/Literature/Heritage’ in A Sight and Sound Reader, London: BFI, 2001, xviii.


Genre provides:

Structure - chronology and chronicle

Iconography (can be appropriated)

Allegories of heroism, endurance, triumph

A resolution

Aspiration, association, nostalgia - sentiment!


The case of Spanish cinema

Francoist cine cruzada (Crusade Cinema)

Alba de América (Dawn of America)

Los últimos de Filipinas (Last Stand in the

Phillipines)

Raza (Race)


The case of Basque cinema

Post-dictatorship investment fosters a rewriting of Basque history (5% of total budget)

Unexportable ‘epics’: Akelarre and La conquista de Albania


‘For few other peoples of the world, and surely no other in Europe, can the scholarly study of history be a matter of such direct and contemporary importance, linked at not many removes to political debate and even terrorism, as is the case with the Basques.’

- Roger Collins, The Basques, Oxford: Blackwell, 1990.


Revisionism - Romanticism and

Surrealism

Vacas - revisionist heritage cinema


‘Who takes the picture?’


‘Scholarly books and museums, civil rituals and political discourse were for a long time the elements with which the Identity (with a capital

“I”) was formulated and its rhetorical narrative constructed.’

Néstor García Canclini,

‘Will There be a Latin American Cinema in the Year 2000? Visual Culture in a Postnational Era’ (trans. Adriana X. Tatum and Ann

Marie Stock) in Ann Marie stock (ed.) Framing Latin American Cinema: Contemporary Critical Approaches, London and

Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997, 246.


‘There is no reason to expect that the most powerful media will enable us to look at ourselves and to recognise our own cultural and regional diversity in order to consider our identity.’

-

Néstor García Canclini, ‘Will There be a Latin American Cinema in the Year 2000? Visual Culture in a Postnational Era’ (trans.

Adriana X. Tatum and Ann Marie Stock) in Ann Marie stock (ed.) Framing Latin American Cinema: Contemporary Critical

Approaches, London and Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997, 251.


‘The state gradually, sometimes suddenly removes itself from cultural production allowing it to be devoured by the private sector with the result that the most dynamic sectors of cultural expression, which produce the most innovative work, suffer the greatest repercussions. [...]

The private sphere, where transnationalization and deterritorialization prevail, has almost exclusive control over the voices and images.’

-

Néstor García Canclini, ‘Will There be a Latin American Cinema in the Year 2000? Visual Culture in a Postnational Era’ (trans.

Adriana X. Tatum and Ann Marie Stock) in Ann Marie stock (ed.) Framing Latin American Cinema: Contemporary Critical

Approaches, London and Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997, 250.


•

‘National labels have promised varieties of

‘otherness’ - of what is culturally different from both Hollywood and the films of other importing countries [but we should] write of states and nation-state cinemas rather than nations and national cinemas.’

-

Stephen Crofts, ‘Concepts of National Cinema’ in The Oxford Guide to Film Studies, eds John Hill and Pamela Church

Gibson, New York: Oxford University Press, 1998, 385-6)

‘Communities of sentiment’

- Georg Sorenson, The Transformation of the state: Beyond the Myth of Retreat, Palgrave Macmillan, 2004


In relation to the past - memory, history and myth interact always contested - accepted dialectic.

In relation to the future - projection of myth - unaccepted dialectic.


It depends on who takes the picture.

How do heritage films extend, or delimit, the possibilities of historical

How do heritage films extend, or delimit, the possibilities of historical representation?

Rob Stone, University of

Birmingham

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How do heritage films extend, or delimit, the possibilities of historical