Universidad de la República, Uruguay
Historical films as mediating tools for the transmission of the recent past: exploring meanings and feelings in the classroom
Films as cultural products are shared texts of a community that provide affordances for the transmission of a collective experience while simultaneously building a cultural and moral code. This code enables intertextual connections and relations that link past and present through affective positionings. These codes affect our understanding of cultural products framing our comprehension of the present and aligning us with interpretive/moral communities. In this presentation, I will share some of the findings of an ongoing project that investigates how youth learn about the recent past through critical engagement with historical films in language classrooms. The goal of the is to better understand and document using film as a mediating factor if youth with varying degrees of closeness to the experiences and people represented in the film can understand the perspective of others and be willing to engage in social action related to others’ experience of suffering.
