The Specious Past: Reflections of a Film Historian in Canada

By way of introduction, I should say that my talk originally had as subtitle- With Apologies to Pardon Tillinghast. I included this because my title The Specious Past is also title of book on historical method by this historian.1I'll be discussing today some of issues that writers of film need to consider. I want to do this because I think that writing of moving image raises different issues than writing of literary history, or social history, or art And I think it does so because of very nature of moving images and institutions that surround them.At same time, though, we can't forget that there are issues of moving image that are similar to general issues of historiography-issues about writing of These issues certainly include questions about facts and questions of point of view-the perspective of historian. And I'll have some comments to make about these issues.However, in particular, I'll refer to special problems of writing film in Canada-a country with of filmmaking outside that of mainstream film histories. And I'll do so from perspective of having been part of that process for many years.I sometimes say that writing of is comparable to making documentary film. In theory, whole world is open. In practice camera can only record where human hand points it, and see only with lens that has been used. And, even after recording, there's whole structuring process of selection and editing before final work is available. Here, quite simply, is answer to why few of us began working on Canadian film some three decades ago. No one had thought it worthwhile to point camera in our direction, quite apart from thinking about what lens might be appropriate. This is perhaps hardly surprising given orientation of most film histories at time. If I can oversimplify, these leaned heavily in direction of films / great personalities view of And personalities, of course, were usually male. What we had to discover (and discover it through practice, not theory)-what we had to discover was an approach now widely espoused as what has been called the film history. This approach insists that is not what art historian Charles Harrison called a of of will. On contrary, it might well be a of wasted and unauthenticated, abandoned and destroyed.''2 This approach emphasizes that of film is not simply an aesthetic Film exists at intersections of aesthetics, and economics, and technology and culture. It's also an approach that, of necessity, I adopted in my early film history-a book called Embattled Shadows.31 say out of necessity partly because it was practical approach developed long before theories of new film history. It was necessary because we had few triumphs of will we could celebrate. So, it was essential to develop an approach that considered film in broader framework than simple artistic achievement. To use my earlier analogy, camera lens had to be pointed in different direction, to consider whether failures might be as interesting as successes. And, indeed, to explore how aesthetics might intersect with economics and with culture.American historian Hayden White has been perhaps single most significant influence on rise of what's been called new film history in United States. Not least of influences has stemmed from White's emphasis on as discourse, as process of narrative as necessarily filtered through perception of historian.For example, in his own work on meta-history, White examined why certain modes of historical discourse were selected in particular periods, why was written in certain way at particular point in time. …

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