Film and history: towards a general ontology

Abstract

In order to bridge the gap between history and film history as academic disciplines, for both fields to benefit from it, scholars need to draw a theory of the function and position of film in society and develop a general ontology of cinema. A fruitful prospect for such a revisionist endeavour can be found in the emergence of world cinema history that over the last decade has developed as a field in which the social function of cinema is being related to issues of representation while taking economic conditions of production and consumption into account.