Historic fiction cinema: Challenges for study
Introduction
The discipline of history fulfills an important role for knowledge because she studies human activities in time and space. Its main objective is to explain the dynamics of society in its structures; analyzed through heuristics, oral, visual and documentary sources. And, with hermeneutical interpretation, to come to the knowledge of what happened in the past, for its understanding, explanation and historical synthesis. As Cicero expressed, history is the science of men in time, the analysis of human societies subject to changes and in continuous transformation.
Developing
Traditional historiographic is a central logo because it conceives history as a discipline that explains events received from the past. This statement continues to predominate to the point that images and objects are only perceived as a complement to the construction of a text. However, there is no need to reject the value of the word as a daily language of human beings and tool for externalization of thought, especially when knowledge is forged with words. But you also have to claim the images, the audiovisual language of cinema and television, since they allow to attach words, voices, intonations, dictions, iconographies of the past and of the present.
Therefore, the researchers of the historic past face a challenge when we address the relationship between cinema and history, especially when we intend to study the historical fiction cinema because there is the pre -established idea that is a faithful reproduction of realities.
Therefore, when we analyze feature films, we must stop waiting for them to succeed; exhibit the different faces of a problem; or that they deal impartially all the tests, characters and groups that appear in a given situation; contextualize historically and describe an event. In other words, they are not accurate because one of the main peculiarities and objectives of the films is to generate movement, color, sound and drama to the past. For their part, the works of written history are not mirrors of the real, but constructions, work done in rules to relate to the traces of the past and represent it are necessarily different.
A simple definition of historical film is as follows: the one that suffered its action in a recognizable past with respect to the current production of its production. This identification will go through the accumulation of details and historical indications capable of giving truth to the audiovisual discourse and doing so in favor of a certain historical sense. In such a way that historical cinema moves between the description of the past and its interpretation. According to the proposal, it remains in a simple visualization or a reinterpretation of the same.
The filmmaker creates a past according to the demands, practices and traditions of the audiovisual media. This task forces him to face the invention of facts, gestures and intonations. This does not mean that historical film films have been recognized for their contributions to historical knowledge and filmmakers are considered as historians. The recognition of these feature films and filmmakers is manifested in the printed works of scholars.
It is convenient to warn that historical cinema may not replace written history, that is, cinematography itself is not able to teach history. A film, usually, builds history as a closed narrative, with its knot, development and outcome; It is characterized by a strong dramatic load, full of emotions, fears, adventures and heroism. Individualizes historical processes through the experiences of its protagonists, of dependent passions and feelings to happen to events, rising to the range of general laws that govern the story.
The condition of cinema shows that the story is in the backdrop (adventurous, melodramatic, terrifying, comic, etc.) of a story subordinated to narrative laws and the show, different from history as such. Models of the scenic tradition have led to prioritize the intensive over the extensive; The dramatic of the narrative. Therefore, historical films are characterized by the predominance of a hero/villain duality, friend/traitor, self-managed woman/fatal woman, among others.
His historical sense has been summarized by advertising with the cliché phrase: based on a real story, but the representations and intentions of the film are not limited to the script, since the promotion of it guides the spectator.
conclusion
This does not imply denying validity to historical cinema. This type of cinematography serves for the dissemination of events of the past and a timely and educational reflection on civic and moral values. The audiovisual image as a historical source requires new tools of visual representation sources that allow its interpretation. A few decades ago Pierre Vilar wrote: History must teach us, in the first place, to read a newspaper we must add to this definition that should also teach to watch and listen to a news and film.
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