How do heritage films extend, or delimit, the possibilities of historical representation?

1. How do heritage films extend, or delimit, the possibilities of historical representation? • Rob Stone, University of Birmingham

2. How do heritage films extend, or delimit, the possibilities of historical representation? • Historical representation in heritage films is extended through illustration, example, everyday detail (costumbrismo), relevance to present (allegory, foreshadowing), realising the myth (‘getting to know’ famous figures and ‘experiencing’ specific events such as battles)...also star discourse, generic conventions, narrative ploys...and also reception (entertainment and education)...

3. How do heritage films extend, or delimit, the possibilities of historical representation? • Historical representation in heritage films is delimited by narrow subjectivity on events and people, revisionism (for a nationalist cause, for example), by the construction of a distorting mirror on the present (false allegory) for political ends,...mythologising the real (mythopaeia)...also star discourse, generic conventions, narrative ploys...and also reception (receptiveness of audience, fore-knowledge or its lack, suiting ‘the mood’ or not...

4. How do heritage films extend, or delimit, the possibilities of historical representation? • Roots of Europe in history...and its break-up? • Heritage cinema is related to myth (especially those of nationhood). A myth is an enduring narrative - how does it contribute to the idea of Europe? • Myth includes and enables the coming to terms with trauma

5. How do heritage films extend, or delimit, the possibilities of historical representation? • History • Myth • Historical representation • Narratives of nationhood • Heritage cinema • History

6. How do heritage films extend, or delimit, the possibilities of historical representation? • ‘Heritage [is] “a project”, if not a conspiracy or a plot that at the very least is a strategy [...]. It is a “bid for hegemony”, a way of using knowledge in the service of power.’ - Raphael Samuel, Theatres of Memory, London and New York: Verso. 1994, 243.

7. How do heritage films extend, or delimit, the possibilities of historical representation? • ‘In a consumer-led society, in which everything has its price, and market values are unchallenged, [heritage] ‘traffics’ in history and ‘commodifies the past.’ -Raphael Samuel, Theatres of Memory, London and New York: Verso. 1994, 242.

8. How do heritage films extend, or delimit, the possibilities of historical representation? • Heritage reclaims the ‘folk’ - a Romantic gesture! • Rewrites or at least reorders the past from a specific perspective • Cements basis of present-day endeavour, justifying same • Reframes future, allows for claims of tradition, symmetry, destiny • Creates a ‘theme park’ representation of history, traditions, customs and values

9. How do heritage films extend, or delimit, the possibilities of historical representation? • History • Myth • Historical representation • Narratives of nationhood • Heritage cinema • History • Memory

10. How do heritage films extend, or delimit, the possibilities of historical representation? • ‘We do not remember, we rewrite memory much as history is rewritten.‘ - Chris Marker, Sans soleil

11. How do heritage films extend, or delimit, the possibilities of historical representation? • Heritage film today is ‘an important space for playing out contemporary anxieties and fantasies of national identity, sexuality, class and power.’ - Andrew Higson, ‘Re-presenting the National Past; Nostalgia and Pastiche in the Heritage Film’ in Fires Were Started: British Cinema and Thatcherism, ed. Lester Friedman, Minneapolis and London: University of Minneapolis Press and UCL press, 1993, 113.

12. How do heritage films extend, or delimit, the possibilities of historical representation? • History - Memory and rewritten memory • Myth - Imagination • Historical representation - Rewritten history • Narratives of nationhood - Anxieties and fantasies • Heritage cinema

13. How do heritage films extend, or delimit, the possibilities of historical representation? • Heritage cinema offers ‘no critical historical perspective.’ - Andrew Higson, ‘Re-presenting the National Past; Nostalgia and Pastiche in the Heritage Film’ in Fires Were Started: British Cinema and Thatcherism, ed. Lester Friedman, Minneapolis and London: University of Minneapolis Press and UCL press, 1993, 113.

14. How do heritage films extend, or delimit, the possibilities of historical representation? • Heritage cinema ‘call(s) forth and playfully betray(s) a popular knowledge of the European past beyond the versions sanctified by official history [...]. Thus films are first and foremost symptomatic of the contemporary imagination, offering unfamiliar takes on familiar myths.’ - Belén Vidal, ‘Classic Adaptations, Modern Reinventions’, Screen 43:1, 2002, 5.

15. How do heritage films extend, or delimit, the possibilities of historical representation? • Heritage cinema ‘has provided a space for marginalised social groups, a sense of putting such people back into history.‘ - Richard Dyer, ‘Heritage Cinema in Europe’ in Encyclopedia of European Cinema, ed. Ginette Vincendeau, London: Cassell, 1995, 205.

16. How do heritage films extend, or delimit, the possibilities of historical representation? • Historical imagery is ‘a dispositif that constitutes, through an appeal to memory and identification, a special form of address, at once highly individual and capable of fostering a sense of belonging.’ - Thomas Elsaesser, European Cinema Face to Face with Hollywood, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2005, 21.

17. How do heritage films extend, or delimit, the possibilities of historical representation? • History - Memory and rewritten memory • Myth - Imagination • Historical representation - Rewritten history • Narratives of nationhood - Anxieties and fantasies • Heritage cinema - Genre

18. How do heritage films extend, or delimit, the possibilities of historical representation? • Heritage cinema ‘constitutes a ‘genre’ only in a loose sense’ - high budgets, historical setting, high production values, A-list directors, stars, polished lighting and camerawork, many changes of decor and extras, well-researched interior design and classical or classical-inspired music. -Ginette Vincendeau, ‘Film/Literature/Heritage’ in A Sight and Sound Reader, London: BFI, 2001, xviii.

19. How do heritage films extend, or delimit, the possibilities of historical representation? • Genre provides: • Structure - chronology and chronicle • Iconography (can be appropriated) • Allegories of heroism, endurance, triumph • A resolution • Aspiration, association, nostalgia - sentiment!

20. How do heritage films extend, or delimit, the possibilities of historical representation? • The case of Spanish cinema • Francoist cine cruzada (Crusade Cinema) • Alba de América (Dawn of America) • Los últimos de Filipinas (Last Stand in the Phillipines) • Raza (Race)

21. How do heritage films extend, or delimit, the possibilities of historical representation? • The case of Basque cinema • Post-dictatorship investment fosters a rewriting of Basque history (5% of total budget) • Unexportable ‘epics’: Akelarre and La conquista de Albania

22. How do heritage films extend, or delimit, the possibilities of historical representation? • ‘For few other peoples of the world, and surely no other in Europe, can the scholarly study of history be a matter of such direct and contemporary importance, linked at not many removes to political debate and even terrorism, as is the case with the Basques.’ - Roger Collins, The Basques, Oxford: Blackwell, 1990.

23. How do heritage films extend, or delimit, the possibilities of historical representation? • Revisionism - Romanticism and Surrealism • Vacas - revisionist heritage cinema

24. How do heritage films extend, or delimit, the possibilities of historical representation? • ‘Who takes the picture?’

25. How do heritage films extend, or delimit, the possibilities of historical representation? • ‘Scholarly books and museums, civil rituals and political discourse were for a long time the elements with which the Identity (with a capital “I”) was formulated and its rhetorical narrative constructed.’ - Néstor García Canclini, ‘Will There be a Latin American Cinema in the Year 2000? Visual Culture in a Postnational Era’ (trans. Adriana X. Tatum and Ann Marie Stock) in Ann Marie stock (ed.) Framing Latin American Cinema: Contemporary Critical Approaches, London and Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997, 246.

26. How do heritage films extend, or delimit, the possibilities of historical representation? • ‘There is no reason to expect that the most powerful media will enable us to look at ourselves and to recognise our own cultural and regional diversity in order to consider our identity.’ - Néstor García Canclini, ‘Will There be a Latin American Cinema in the Year 2000? Visual Culture in a Postnational Era’ (trans. Adriana X. Tatum and Ann Marie Stock) in Ann Marie stock (ed.) Framing Latin American Cinema: Contemporary Critical Approaches, London and Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997, 251.

27. How do heritage films extend, or delimit, the possibilities of historical representation? • ‘The state gradually, sometimes suddenly removes itself from cultural production allowing it to be devoured by the private sector with the result that the most dynamic sectors of cultural expression, which produce the most innovative work, suffer the greatest repercussions. [...] The private sphere, where transnationalization and deterritorialization prevail, has almost exclusive control over the voices and images.’ - Néstor García Canclini, ‘Will There be a Latin American Cinema in the Year 2000? Visual Culture in a Postnational Era’ (trans. Adriana X. Tatum and Ann Marie Stock) in Ann Marie stock (ed.) Framing Latin American Cinema: Contemporary Critical Approaches, London and Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997, 250.

28. How do heritage films extend, or delimit, the possibilities of historical representation? • ‘National labels have promised varieties of ‘otherness’ - of what is culturally different from both Hollywood and the films of other importing countries [but we should] write of states and nation-state cinemas rather than nations and national cinemas.’ - Stephen Crofts, ‘Concepts of National Cinema’ in The Oxford Guide to Film Studies, eds John Hill and Pamela Church Gibson, New York: Oxford University Press, 1998, 385-6) • ‘Communities of sentiment’- Georg Sorenson, The Transformation of the state: Beyond the Myth of Retreat, Palgrave Macmillan, 2004

29. How do heritage films extend, or delimit, the possibilities of historical representation? • In relation to the past - memory, history and myth interact - always contested - accepted dialectic. • In relation to the future - projection of myth - unaccepted dialectic.

30. How do heritage films extend, or delimit, the possibilities of historical representation? • It depends on who takes the picture.