A.H.A. Convention Report

2 FINANCE The Committee is presently being operated on the familiar shoestring . We want to have bigger, and more, newsletters (with pictures), to organize conferences and to continue our efforts at linking together historians interested in film use. But we need money. You've been sent a membership form along with this newsletter, and we're asking a two dollar membership fee to defray expenses . A further contribution would, of course, be appreciated but the two dollars will be the minimum required for membership in the Committee. It will entitle you to the newsletter (hopefully four each year) and to be informed of future meetings and activities. If finances permit and members cooperate, we hope to publish an extended collection of film reviews. Convention 1971 Planning will begin shortly for the next AHA convention, to be held in New York City. If you have suggestions for panel discussions about film, or would like to see the Committee undertake some specific function at the convention, please submit your ideas to the editors. We're hoping to have representatives of the Committee at the other scholarly conventions as well, including the forthcoming OAH meeting in New Orleans. Foreign Friends The Committee has been getting a steady stream of mail for the past few months, and a good deal from overseas. Thus far we've been in contact with historians and film people from England, France, Germany, Holland, and Denmark. We'll continue this overseas communication , for a considerable amount of vital work is currently being done in Europe, and we can learn much from our colleagues abroad. *** A. H. A. CONVENTION REPORT *** The 1970 Convention of the American Historical Association devoted three official sessions to films and history. The scholars who attended the Boston meeting showed much interest in the programs . Session #35 was entitled Films and History. The film, Confrontation : Paris, 1968, produced by two historians, Seymour Drescher of the University of Pittsburgh and Eugene McCreary of Carnegie-Mellon University, was screened and discussed. Drescher and McCreary stressed the limitations of their budget and the problems of production. They were interested in producing the film as a historical document to describe with the most dramatic material available the step by step evolution of violent confrontation. Much of their footage was provided by French students and required extensive editing and organizing into chronological sequence. Some of their material was filmed especially for the project and some was purchased from news services, primarily to fill in the background of social and economic unrest in France. While there was some criticism of the failure of the filmmakers to take a position for or against the revolutionary development in Paris, it was generally agreed that the film was a fine example of the way historians could bring their special talents to bear on film as a device for historical research and teaching. Session #86 was entitled The Savage Eye; American Society Since 1945 - An exploration Through Multimedia. The presentation by Leon F. Litwack of the University of California, Berkeley, was an automated show that used two slide projectors as well as a movie projector and sound. By combining and contrasting the three projected images Litwack was able to create some devastating effects which perfectly timed sound helped to heighten. At one point slides of street violence and political assassination were contrasted with motion pictures of Woodstock, at another point footage of black protest was contrasted with advertisements for "white cosmetics." The sound shifted from Simon and Garfunkel to Lyndon Johnson, from the Beatles to Martin Luther King and from Timothy Leary to Fulton J. Sheen. For one period there was total silence as the projectors clicked off the pictures of 242 young men, a weeks dead in Vietnam. The presentation could be criticized for the radical point of view it expressed, but it was practical proof that media of all kinds can help the historian to interpret a matter as complex as American culture since 1945. Session #101 was devoted to The A.H. A. Feature Films Project: Preview and Evaluation of Its Products to date. The meeting was announced late as an addenda to the printed program. J. Joseph Huthmacher of the University of...