Due to limited teaching time and a lot of teaching contents, many people consider that the best way to teach history is through the lecture method. But many teachers and researchers attempt to supplement lectures, to engage students interest and develop their ability to criti- cally think. A common way to supplement lectures is through the use of history-movie in the history class. Every history-movie are effective educationally. Even if we cover same events or characters, educational value and student’s understanding will be different depending on the presentation of the stories. Because of these reasons, it is necessary to grasp characteristics of history-movie and to match it with the main subject.
I defined the meaning of history-movie in order to make it easy to apply. First, It contains historic background. Historic background means that it is either set in a specific age or based on historic events. It often includes reinterpretation and reconstruction of past events through modern point of view.(historical feature, times feature) Second, It is based on historic characters. The story development includes either real historic characters or typical people who may have existed even though they are not real characters.(existentiality, virtuality, mixure) Third, the cause and effect of stories has to contain natural context. This means that the main plot or storyline has to be almost same with historic events or even if it is a fiction, it has to be highly probable.(historicity, creativity) In other words, a history-movie means ‘A film which is composed of historic background and characters based on historic context.
Based on historic background, characters, context I have chosen 7 attributes of a historic film : historical feature, times feature, exis- tentiality, virtuality, mixure, historicity, creativity. I classify historic film into 4types : ‘Docu-type’, ‘Reenacting of Events’, ‘Creation of Characters’ and ‘Derivative-type’. I will describe differences and characteristics between types of ‘Reenacting of Events’ and ‘Creation of Characters’ which are similar. I chose <Roaring currents>, <Tae Guk Gi>, <War of arrows> and <The Front Line> as examples of these types. I interviewed students. to verify strength of typical history-movie.
Students weren't concerned whether background event was real, but more focused on the general massage and they sympathized with cha- racters after watching movies. But, after watching movies students not only understood and sympathized with characters but also concerned with whether the events were real or not and the development of stories. They generally believed the stories are real history.
Given this, I want to propose ways to utilize history-movies easily and effectively in the classroom. First, Through all type of history-movies, teacher can show situations and events of a specific age to the students. Second, through ‘Reenacting of Events’ or ‘Creating Characters’ type of movies, teachers allow students to understand people’s thought and feeling and infer the reason of their conduct. Third, through ‘Reenacting of Events’ type movies, teacher can help students understand the course of historic events according to cause and effects. Fourth, through inner and external factor of history-movies, teachers can help students experience “doing history”Since many history-movies are released every year, in order to choose and utilize them, it is useful to classify them by types and understand their attributes.