‘Something was wrong with the movie’: formal analysis of historical films and the development of historical literacy (‘Había algo fuera de lugar en la película’: análisis formal de las películas históricas y desarrollo de la alfabetización histórica)

Abstract

Historical film literacy has been defined as a set of skills that will 'empower students to look at movies set in the past critically as historical documents'. In the present paper we aim to explore the possibilities of advancing these skills through the development of a model for history education that adds an element of formal analysis to the analysis of historical films in the classroom. Next, we attempt to provide an overview of these skills based on preliminary research findings from the field. Based on students' film reviews written as historical film analyses which made use of the model presented, we conclude that three types of skills related to history education are developed: skills related to historical thinking concepts, skills related to the interpretation of the cinematic language and conventions as ways to construct historical meanings and skills related to analysing the processes of constructing history and memory.