Film & History News

FILM & HISTORY NEWS The History Teacher Moves t? a New Home Many HFC members will already be familiar with The History Teacher, but may be unaware that the journal is now being published in Long Beach, California, under a new group of editors. Of particular interest is the creation of a media department in the magazine, under the editorship of Patrick Griffin who made Goodbye Billy (see F & H, Volume II, #2, pp. 1-10), Griffin seeks to cover film and its relationship to the historian, both as teacher and researcher, and would welcome inquiries or contributions from those who make, study or use film. Write to: Patrick Griffin, Media Editor, The History Teacher, California State University at Long Beach, Long Beach, California, 90840. Project Center for Filu and the Humanities Operating under a grant from the National .Endowment for the Humanities the Project Center for Film and the Humanities seeks to disseminate the humanities to a general adult audience by means of film programs. The Center is located in New York City and will be operating, during its experimental year 1973, in the metropolitan area. The plan is to provide complete programs, films, written guides, discussion leaders and follow up, in an attempt to bring the humanist and the general audience together. For further information write: Dr. Mereld Keys, Director, Project Center for Film and the Humanities, 11 West 42nd Street, New York City, 10036. Fi m Propoganda and the Historian Historians and documentary filmmakers will gather in London in July for the purpose of assessing the usefulness of British wartime official film in the study of the Second World War. Speakers will include A. J. P. Taylor, James JoIl, Nicholas Pronay, and documentary filmmakers Edgar Anstey, Harry Watt and Basil Wright. A selection of Ministry of Information films will also be shown and discussed. The conference is planned for July 9-11 at the Imperial War Museum. For information contact: Miss Frances Thorpe, SSRC Film Register, 20 Flaxman Terrace, London W.C.I, England. 77 The Historian As Filmmaker: New Orleans - December/ 1972 The Historians Film Committee sponsored a panel at the 1972 AHA convention in New Orleans featuring the Dutch historian and filmmaker, Rolf Schuursma. Dr. Schuursma's subject was "The Historian as Filmmaker: Problems and Rewards of Film Production," in which the possibilities of historians producing and writing their own films were explored. Dr. Schuursma showed one of his own films , Anton Mussert , based on the life of the Dutch Fascist leader and collaborator. Based on archive and newsreel film, Mussert was intended both as an essay in modern Dutch history and as an exercise in the production of historically accurate films made by scholars and historians. The panel included John E. O'Connor, HFC associate chairman and Peter Rollins of the State University of Oklahoma. Dr. Lewis Hanke of the University of Massachusetts chaired the session, which was attended by several dozen persons . The film proved to be a moving and highly informative study of Dutch Fascism and Mussert' s relations with the Nazi occupying forces. It was made with strict attention to accuracy, verification of sources and was obviously the work of an historian rather than a commercial film producer. Both panelists had praise for Dr. Schuursma's work and comment centered on the issue of approach to the materials. Dr. Rollins in particular wondered if other film material could have been applied to broaden and amplify the film's message. The audience was in general receptive both to the specific film and to the theory behind it, that historians are their own best filmmakers. In contrast to the 1971 AHA convention in New York City, film played a small role in the New Orleans proceedings. The HFC panel was the only one on the program dealing in any way with films and the historian and was therefore especially welcome by many of those attending. But it is true as well that the convention as a whole was smaller, less attended and without the range of subject matter common to the usual meetings—the reason being obviously that New Orleans is far from the academic centers and that in a time of reduced budgets, many...