Name: slaves on screen,film and historical vision
Price: 46.06 EUR
Availability: InStock
Author: Natalie Zemon Davis
ISBN: 9780674008212

portada slaves on screen,film and historical vision

slaves on screen,film and historical vision

Type

Physical Book

Author

Natalie Zemon Davis

Publisher

Harvard University Press

Language

English

Pages

176

Format

Paperback

Dimensions

20.1 x 13.0 x 1.4 cm

Weight

0.23 kg.

ISBN

0674008219

ISBN13

9780674008212

Synopsis "slaves on screen,film and historical vision"

The written word and what the eye can see are brought together in this fascinating foray into the depiction of resistance to slavery through the modern medium of film. Davis, whose book The Return of Martin Guerre was written while she served as consultant to the French film of the same name, now tackles the large issue of how the moving picture industry has portrayed slaves in five major motion pictures spanning four generations. The potential of film to narrate the historical past in an effective and meaningful way, with insistence on loyalty to the evidence, is assessed in five films: Spartacus (1960), Burn! (1969), The Last Supper (1976), Amistad (1997), and Beloved (1998). Davis shows how shifts in the viewpoints of screenwriters and directors parallel those of historians. Spartacus is polarized social history; the films on the Caribbean bring ceremony and carnival to bear on the origins of revolt; Amistad and Beloved draw upon the traumatic wounds in the memory of slavery and the resources for healing them. In each case Davis considers the intentions of filmmakers and evaluates the film and its techniques through historical evidence and interpretation. Family continuity emerges as a major element in the struggle against slavery. Slaves on Screen is based in part on interviews with the Nobel prize-winning author of Beloved, Toni Morrison, and with Manuel Moreno Fraginals, the historical consultant for The Last Supper. Davis brings a new approach to historical film as a source of thought experiments about the past. While the five motion pictures are sometimes cinematic triumphs, with sound history inspiring the imagination, Davis is critical of fictive scenes and characters when they mislead viewers in important ways. Good history makes good films.

Natalie Zemon Davis

(Author)

View Author's Page

Natalie Zemon Davis (1928–2023) was an American-Canadian historian known for her innovative approach to the cultural and social history of early modern Europe. Her most famous work is The Return of Martin Guerre (1983), a pioneering study in microhistory that has been translated into more than twenty languages. Other notable works include Fiction in the Archives (1987), Women on the Margins (1995), and Trickster Travels: A Sixteenth-Century Muslim Between Worlds (2006). Davis taught at institutions such as Princeton and the University of Toronto, and her work is characterized by blending history, anthropology, and literature to recover the voices of marginalized people in history.

Throughout her career, Davis received numerous accolades, including the Holberg Prize in 2010 and the National Humanities Medal from the U.S. in 2012. She was also named a Companion of the Order of Canada. Her legacy continues in the field of historiography, where her interdisciplinary approach and focus on personal narratives have deeply influenced generations of historians.

See less