Second nature : artifice and history in film

  • Gabrielle Finnane

Western Sydney University thesis: Master's thesis

Abstract

The thesis comprises a screen play for a one hour film and dissertation examining artistic issues in the intersection of biography and history in fictional films. The aim was firstly to broaden the definition of what is involved in filming historical fictions, in terms of how both characters and historical settings are conceived. Secondly the work explores the artifice of historical representation on the screen through case studies of films which are experiments in filming history and biography. Thirdly both the screenplay and the dissertation consider the implication of fictions which deal with minor historical figures. Primarily the thesis elucidates conceptions of historical artiface in the cinema advanced by films themselves, films which had either a paradigmatic or an idiosyncratic role in the development of certain artistic practices. Films, like works of written fiction, have in many respects invented new meanings for, and associations with, the past. The thesis concludes that the different conceptions of historical artiface embodied in fictional films have implications for our sense of the past.
Date of Award1996
Original languageEnglish

Keywords

  • historical films
  • motion pictures and history

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