Guidelines sent with Film being reviewed.

The AHR has reviewed films since 1989. As with other changes in the content of the journal over the years, the decision to review films as well as books stemmed from the AHR's mandate to evaluate important forms of historical analysis. Film has become a critical and widely used medium for understanding the past. As the editors of a journal of history, our primary tasks in reviewing films are to identify films relevant to the scholarly interests of the professional historians who constitute our primary readership and to evaluate how such films contribute to both our understanding of the past and to historical debates about the past.

In trying to accomplish these tasks, the editors recognize the distinctive nature of film as a medium of historical interpretation. More significant, we understand that because of the way the medium has developed and the way it engages the past, both dramatic and documentary films must be reviewed. Only by including both formats can we offer our readers reviews that address the full possibilities of crafting different views of the past through this medium. At the same time, the decision to review dramatic films is also an acknowledgement of their increasing importance in constructing a popular understanding of the past.

Despite our recognition of the distinctiveness of film, AHR film reviews are intended to be works of scholarly analysis that evaluate the historical merits of a film rather than its technique or relationship to film as a distinctive artistic genre. Nor are reviews designed merely to evaluate a film's authenticity. Instead, AHR film reviews should focus on four primary issues: the originality of the film's contribution to our understanding of history, the relationship of a film to historical scholarship on its subject, the sophistication of the historical analysis employed in the film, and the effectiveness of the film in communicating its ideas and arguments.

Like all sections of the AHR, the film reviews operate under particular constraints. While we are mindful of the need to be as comprehensive as possible in selecting films for review, there is simply not enough space in the journal to review every film of historical significance. Our goal is to be as fair and thorough as we can in surveying and reporting on the most important films for professional historians. In addition to the obvious space limitations, film reviews are also constrained by the peculiarities of the film-production process itself. We cannot overcome the modernist bent of film production and distribution that privileges the present and recent past over earlier times. Nor can we change the American and West European dominance of the industry that results in valuing Western subjects and Western perspectives over those from the rest of the world. We do, however, try to review the widest range of historical films that we can in an attempt to overcome these limitations as much as possible.

The AHR's film reviewing procedures are designed to fulfill our goals within these constraints. The most important decision we make is determining which films to review. Our central consideration is the importance of a film to historical understanding and scholarship. Importance is determined by the significance of the questions asked about the past by the film and the creativity of the filmmaker in crafting answers to those questions. We are particularly interested in reviewing films that offer innovative historical arguments, address relatively neglected historical subjects, or inform historical discussions on an important topic.

Once a film has been selected for review, a reviewer is selected from our files of professional scholars active in the various fields of history and related disciplines. The primary qualification for film reviewers is an understanding of the historical subject matter of the film. We determine qualified reviewers based on individual records of scholarly work in fields of history or historically informed work in related disciplines relevant to the subject and themes of the film to be reviewed. Our preference is for reviewers who have published extensively on topics addressed by the film under review. We also generally require that reviewers have earned a Ph.D. or its equivalent such as J.D. or Th.D. We do not use reviewers whose primary qualification is scholarship in film studies, because our central concern is to select reviewers who can ask the kinds of questions that historians ought to ask in evaluating any interpretation of the past.

Finally, the AHR staff determines the length of a review and, once it has been received, edits it. We expect reviewers to write thoughtful and engaging critiques that explain the basic historical argument of the film, assess its strengths and weaknesses, and place the film in its historiographical context. We encourage them to do so in a way that addresses readers outside the bounds of their particular historical specialty. We do not dictate the contents of reviews, but we do delete passages that are, in our judgment, ad hominem attacks on the makers or subjects of a film. Reviews range in size from 500 to 1,200 words; the average review is 800. We often group films together to give reviewers an opportunity to analyze significant tendencies in historical filmmaking and to assess the kind of history being developed in films from a particular region or concerning a particular issue. These review essays range in length from 2,000 to 6,000 words.

These procedures and policies grow out of the editors' conviction that film now claims an important place among the forms of historical discourse, and consequently film reviews are one more way that the AHR fulfills its mandate to present and evaluate significant historical scholarship.

© American Historical Association

Updated 10/02/06