Film and Public Memory

Your goal, aside from making sure it travels safely from cache to cache, is to share your favorite movie that draws from or has contributed to history.
 

This is 1 of 10 trackables that I have released as part of my Capstone project for my Master of Liberal Arts degree.  There are also 10 corresponding caches placed in Baltimore, MD that go along with these trackables.  Each trackable and cache signifies a course I took in the program.  My goal is to share my experiences in each class and hope that you will also be inspired to share some of your experiences with this trackable.

This class completely changed the way I watch films.  We viewed films as a type of public history.  These films became constructed versions of the events, people and ideas of history.  If you have seen the film JFK, you likely think of events in the film when that name is mentioned.  If you’ve seen Platoon, and haven’t experienced the Vietnam War first hand, it is very likely that scenes from that film will play in your mind when that particular war is mentioned.  Jurassic Park contributes to many of our “memories” of dinosaurs.  We weren’t around when dinosaurs roamed the earth, but movies like that help us “remember” what they were possibly like.

I particularly enjoyed this class because I had the opportunity to hear perspectives on these different films from different types of people I took that class with.  There were school teachers, researchers, mortgage brokers, HR professionals, full-time students, retired people and many more professions represented in that class.  Geocaching can often turn an ordinary lamp post to one person into a different kind of memory to a geocacher.

Your goal, aside from making sure it travels safely from cache to cache, is to share your favorite movie that draws from or has contributed to history.