Teaching European History through Cinema (TEHC).

Year 2018

Research promoted by Creative Europe - Media (Call: EACEA 25/2016), Teaching European History Through Cinema involved five European countries (Italy, Bulgaria, Ireland, Romania and Slovenia) with the aim of educating people about the language of cinema by reinforcing knowledge of European cinema among the younger generations, with particular attention to teaching and understanding European history.

The research set itself the objective of breaking a long and dangerous tradition that looks at cinema as a simple "illustration" of history, reversing the perspective if anything: analysing a history that takes shape more and more under the influence of cinema and the image, starting from the mediation of the audiovisual. In order to understand how cinema builds a "vision" of history, the project envisaged - after a cycle of historical film screenings and a series of lessons on the language of cinema addressed to history teachers - that the students would make video essays based on the images of the films analysed.

As a didactic tool, the video essays are a very useful approach to practical learning, a "learning by doing" methodology: for students, they can represent a form of appropriation, re-use, re-circulation and reflection on images that uses digital tools not only to encourage the study of cinema but also to search for new ways of relating to digital media, more engaging and meaningful. As for the specific TEHC project, the video essays have been a practical and stimulating tool to reflect on history and cinema, deconstructing the staging of history and the symbolic value and representation of the image.