You may know I’m a communications major. That means I learn all about the mass media (TV, newspapers, advertisements, etc). Currently, I’m in a class that also has a lot of history and political science majors. The class is titled “History through Film.”

It’s very interesting to analyze the way films portray history.We watch films like “Hotel Rwanda,” “Braveheart” and “A Man for All Seasons” – all fantastic films. After watching them, we look at how the director uses history to depict the past and the present. “Braveheart” isn’t historically accurate at all, but through it we studied the idea of myth and national identity. In the movie, William Wallace – played by Mel Gibson – is a hero who led the Scottish to freedom from aristocracy.

It’s neat to realize that a historically inaccurate movie can still teach us and help us. The movie “Hotel Rwanda” is about genocide in Rwanda in the ‘90s. This kind of movie falls into the historical aspect of remembering national trauma. Even if “Hotel Rwanda” was not entirely accurate, it’s still good to remember things like genocide so we aren’t as likely to repeat them.

I hope that by sharing a little snippet of my class, I piqued your interest. This is just one of the cool classes I’ve taken at Gannon.

What’s your favorite historical film? I’d love to get a conversation going in the comment section.