The persistence of History. Cinema, television and the modern event - Vivian Sobchack (red.), 1996

Abstract

"The Persistence of History examines how the moving image has completely altered traditional modes of historical thought and representation. Exploring a range of film and video texts, from The Ten Commandments to the Rodney King video, from the projected work of documentarian Errol Morris to Oliver Stone's JFK and Spielberg's Schindler's List, the volume questions the appropriate forms of media for making the incoherence and fragmentation of contemporary history intelligible"--Publisher. The modernist event -- Cinematic shots: the narration of violence -- Historical consciousness and the viewer: Who killed Vincent Chin? -- "I'll see it when I believe it": Rodney King and the prison-house of video -- Antimodernism as historical representation in a consumer culture: Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments, 1923, 1956, 1993 -- Modernism and the narrative of nation in JFK -- Andrei Rublev: the medieval epic as post-utopian history -- Subject positions, speaking positions: from Holocaust, Our Hitler, and Heimat to Shoah and Schindler's List -- Historical ennui, feminist boredom -- The future of the past: film and the beginnings of postmodern history -- Interrotroning history: Errol Morris and the documentary of the future -- The professors of history.