Background: No matter how serious or honest the film makers, and no matter how deeply committed they are to rendering the subject faithfully, the history that finally appears on the screen can never fully satisfy the historian as historian (though it may satisfy the historian as film goer). Inevitably, something happens...that changes the meaning of the past as it is understood by those of us who work in words. (Robert Rosenstone, Visions of the Past: the Challenge of Film to our Idea of History, 1995, 2)
Historical knowledge has splintered, disintegrated. The only honest way for us to render the fullness of the past is through montage, the juxtaposition of unlike images to form new combinations of meaning - a meaning that we, the viewers, must work to achieve.(Ibid,192) In the past decade a fruitful but largely un-theorized crossover between the audio visual media and exhibition practice has occurred. Internationally, it has often been the desire of filmmakers, curators and exhibiting institutions to express the multiple story strands of the history of particular places that has led to the exploration of non linear digital presentation technologies such as the touchscreen interactive. eg. Tracing the Decay of Fiction, University of Southern California Annenburg Centre(2002), My Brighton (1996) Croydon Clocktower (1996). This presentation will consider this phenomenon and present Channels of History as a detailed case study that brings together (exhibition) space, place(The Channel Country) and (touch) screen. It will then consider what a documentary filmmaker needs to consider if planning to 'place the moving image' in an exhibition context and call for greater dialogue between filmmakers, curators and historians. Profile:Trish FitzSimons is a documentary filmmaker and senior lecturer in the Griffith Film School. In 1996 she was the recipient of an Australian Commonwealth Universities Fellowship to Britain to explore the concept of interactive documentary, which allowed her to first explore the exhibition/documentary nexus. In 2002 she curated the Channels of History exhibition which explores the women (of both Murri and European origin), land and history of far south west Queensland. It opened at the State Library of Queensland and has spent the past twelve months in outback Queensland. It is currently on display at the South Australian Museum before continuing on to the Constitutional Centre in Perth and the Mildura Arts Centre. Enquiries to [email protected] or 6488 1340.
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