From celluloid to classroom: teaching post-war Europe through film

Engaging students through films and media

Teachers and educators often face challenges in engaging students with history, sparking their interest, and fostering a critical and accurate understanding of the past. In today's media-saturated world, where children and teenagers are immersed in various forms of media, using films as a means to ‘see the past’ can be useful, as they provide an engaging access point to history through moving images.

Building on this idea and taking advantage of the ongoing digitisation of film heritage, as well as the development of user-friendly online learning environments, the ViCTOR-E project has created a teaching toolkit that promotes the study of history through film.

About the ViCTOR-E project

ViCTOR-E (Visual Culture of Trauma, Obliteration, and Reconstruction in Post-WW2 Europe) was a research project conducted by Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main, the Czech Academy of Science, the Université Paris1 Sorbonne-Panthéon, and the Università degli Studi di Udine, and including several film archives as well as the EFG - European Film Gateway as associated partners. From 2019 - 2022, the project investigated how nonfiction cinema actively represented and shaped European societies during the first decade after World War II, contributing to the continent’s transition from the aftermath of war to new urban spaces and more inclusive societies.

The project drew upon a vast collection of documentaries and newsreels from that period, providing insights into this crucial historical context. The extensive online exhibition, Frames of Reconstruction, contextualises this audiovisual heritage alongside other documents and interviews with eyewitnesses by focusing on specific aspects. The exhibition, as well as the accompanying e-learning exercises, resulted from the fruitful collaboration between researchers, educators, film archives and other cultural institutions. In particular, film archives have shown great interest and generously provided the historical documents that contribute to a comprehensive understanding of the post-war period in Europe. In cooperation with them and as part of the project, the European Film Gateway has published a large thematic collection of nearly 700 films from this period.

New e-learning activities

The e-learning activities focusing on topics such as 'War Crimes and Justice', 'The Housing Problem', 'The Media', 'Exiles and Refugees', '(De)Colonization', 'Schooling and Education', and 'Towards a United Europe' are available in German, Czech, French, Italian, English, Bulgarian and Spanish. They are hosted on the online platform Historiana, which was chosen by the project as a well-established and developed tool that allows for an interactive approach to teaching history and gives educators the freedom to modify exercises to fit their teaching style and goals. In an effort to contribute with more multilingual educational content, community members from EuroClio and Europeana translated some of the activities into Spanish and Bulgarian.

All e-learning activities developed by ViCTOR-E are suitable for students aged 14 to 18, but can be adapted to younger students. They come with accompanying background information for teachers focusing on the use of film as a historical source in class. Broader thematic activities feature film excerpts accompanied by other visual sources and guide students through a progression of tasks to help them develop a critical understanding of the historical context. Additionally, short pointed exercises focus on analysing individual film scenes or newsreel segments, further enhancing students' critical engagement with audiovisual documents.

Opportunities and challenges

One of the challenges encountered by the project was designing activities suitable for students and teachers across different countries and educational systems, each with its own sensitivities regarding the study of the past. However, we firmly believe that taking a transnational approach to history can be highly beneficial. It demonstrates to students that Europe shares a common history beyond national narratives, fostering a sense of European belonging.

Using film to teach history comes with some risks. During testing workshops in Italy and Czechia, students expressed great interest in films as historical sources. They were drawn in and particularly impressed by the power and clarity of the images in (re)presenting the past, establishing a direct connection to history. However, the presumed 'truth' of particularly non-fiction film images, can be counterproductive if it encourages uncritical reception. When using film in history classes, it is crucial to emphasise that there is no such thing as a "real" image. Every film and image is an interpretation of reality, conveying cultural, political, and ideological ideas, values, and beliefs. Like any other historical source, films have multiple meanings and require critical analysis and interpretation. Therefore, the accompanying teaching materials consistently highlight the essential role of teachers in guiding students towards a deeper understanding of both the film and its complex historical context.

Find out more

Teachers can find all e-learning activities on the online exhibition, and also discover additional teaching material. By registering on Historiana, you can customise each activity to best suit your classes and students, providing new perspectives on the past through the lens of film.

The project ViCTOR-E was financially supported by the HERA Joint Research Programme which is co-funded by BMBF via DLR-PT, CAS, ANR, MUR and the European Commission through Horizon 2020.