The postmodernist re-evaluation of historical study has let to an awareness of the value of the moving image to the historian. Film can present us with glimpses of a past independent of discourse and its unique link with reality carries with it inevatible assumptions of authenticity. Yet the selection and manipulation of material by the filmmaker and the dependence on causality or the establishment of 'fact', makes historical documentary as problematic as any other mode of historiography. National history is shaped as national identity, and, ultimately, acts of commemoration say as much about the present as the past
