Film And History

Historiophoty is a new research direction. About the new subject, the historical viewpoint is dominating over the academic circles. But at the movies, research on this subject mostly about the history of cinemas, the historiography view in a film and how to tell a history story, etc. Few scholars analyze the topic from the intention of image creation. Few people care about these questions:how combine history and film, how history would be told in a film, what is the relationship between conception of history and film technique, or even a theoretical system. It is a pity that the subject has received only scant attention. With the help of historiophoty theory of Annales School, this paper chooses film as the typical form of visual image. It chooses a case "A City of Sadness" directed by Hsiao-hsien Hou from Taiwan as an example, which is based on closereading and answering the questions how the film destruct the credibility of the state identification and tectonic national identity by audio-visual language and screen picture design, to explain the communication of film and history. It is a new way to think over the relationship between film and history. This paper come to the conclusion that film and history interact each other, both tectonic and destruct. Firstly, they tectonic each other. No matter film or history, they are all understanding about the world. Film is a story, history either. Secondly, they destruct each other. History can appear as legend, hua-ben, or drama, along with the development of time, it also can be a film. We cannot tell the boundary between historiography and film. Film explain the rule of the world, history either. When we face to so many different or opposite explanations, it must be conflict with each other and counteract each other.