Towards the “Historical-Cinematographic Operation”: Holocaust Film in the Construction of Historical Knowledge

Abstract

The current implications of film in the development of historical knowledge, its decisive role in the dissemination of ideas and in collective memory, summon us to investigate the ways in which films about the past are not only a source or a product derived from the historiography, but inescapable constructors of what societies understand by the past and by the events that profoundly marked them, such as the Holocaust. In this paper I will address the role of cinema in the construction of historical knowledge, in general, and of this event, in particular. I will present different considerations on the historical knowledge, to characterize the unavoidable place of film in that construction. I will address the links and influences between cinematography and historiography on the Holocaust, and finally I will reflect on the current status-statute of these representations and their future.