Cinema and History – The Telling of Stories (Shortcuts) - Softcover

This is a very useful book that provides a timely reminder of the complexity of the field of cinema and history... The book has a dual focus on the discipline of film history, and on the representation of the past, and it combines these two in a thought-provoking and trenchant way. It asks all the right questions, and stimulates the reader to provide answers by indicating the most fruitful paths to follow.--Sue Harper, University of Portsmouth

A readable, hugely informative volume and a valuable addition to the Short Cuts series... Chopra-Gant has achieved the miraculous feat of scaling down the complex issues without falsifying and reducing the subject matter... [He] has provided a rich critical milieu and methods that brilliantly illuminate the stakes, the character of, and limitations and potential of media's uses of the past.--Marcia Landy, University of Pittsburgh

History. It's just one thing after another, right? Not according to this slim tome, which argues filmed history is more about storytelling than facts. Using a selection of movies, lecturer Chopra-Gant asks some big questions about the relationship between the filcks and reality. Does Rear Window tell us anything about '50s America? Do epics like Munich give a skewed view of true events? Smartly written, it's a solid primer which asks whose story is history?'--Jamie Russell "Total Film "