Clio’s glasses: The historical and cultural challenge of cinema

Abstract

Historical film analysis increasingly becomes part of historical and cultural research. The article investigates problems of image, text, context and subtext in the field of historical films. The 20th century is the century of the moving images, of the documentation and representation of historical events, processes, mentalities and ambivalent historical interpretations on the screen. It is argued that film is representation and history at once, and that the moving images, the mise-en-scène cannot be reduced to another text. The analysis of film is trans-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary, based on the arts, theatre, literature and the culture of images in combination with the technological and economic developments of our time. The history of cinema should also be understood as the histories of cinema.