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Movies, Documentaries and Museum Exhibits
This page features links to reviews of movies, documentaries and exhibits with a historical theme. Listings are in reverse chronological order. Descriptions are taken directly from the linked publication. If you have articles you think should be listed on the Pop Culture page, please send them to the editor editor@historynewsnetwork.org.
SOURCE: NYT (5-1-09)
— There may be worse Jewish museums in the world than the Jüdisches Museum Berlin, which opened in 2001. But it is difficult to imagine that any could be as uninspiring and banal, particularly given its pedigree and promise. Has any other Jewish museum been more celebrated or its new building (designed by Daniel Libeskind) so widely hailed? Is any other Jewish museum of more symbolic importance?
This is the largest such institution in Europe, a national museum devoted to exploring the history of a people this country was once intent on eradicating. Is there any museum of any kind more laden with the baggage of guilt and suffering, of restitution and tribute?
So many museums now deal with recollections of trauma that Berlin’s fraught examples are illuminating. Ruin and relics are part of renovation here. When the destroyed Neue Synagoge was being restored, it was clear that the original 19th-century structure, with its ornate echoes of Alhambra, could never be...
This is the largest such institution in Europe, a national museum devoted to exploring the history of a people this country was once intent on eradicating. Is there any museum of any kind more laden with the baggage of guilt and suffering, of restitution and tribute?
So many museums now deal with recollections of trauma that Berlin’s fraught examples are illuminating. Ruin and relics are part of renovation here. When the destroyed Neue Synagoge was being restored, it was clear that the original 19th-century structure, with its ornate echoes of Alhambra, could never be...
Monday, May 4, 2009 - 00:47
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SOURCE: BBC (5-3-09)
Rome's underground Christian, Jewish and pagan burial sites, the Catacombs, date back to the 2nd Century AD.
There are more than 40 of them stretching over 170km (105 miles).
But, until now, they have never been fully documented, their vast scale only recorded with handmade maps.
That is now changing, following a three-year project to create the first fully comprehensive three-dimensional image using laser scanners.
There are more than 40 of them stretching over 170km (105 miles).
But, until now, they have never been fully documented, their vast scale only recorded with handmade maps.
That is now changing, following a three-year project to create the first fully comprehensive three-dimensional image using laser scanners.
Sunday, May 3, 2009 - 23:47
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (5-1-09)
The character of Jack the Ripper was invented by journalists to sell newspapers, and his East End murder spree was actually the work of several unrelated killers, according to a new book.
Senior police officers who investigated the 1888 prostitute killings were convinced they were not the work of a single man, research by the historian Dr Andrew Cook has uncovered.
A letter boasting about the killings signed by a "Jack the Ripper" was forged by a journalist at the Star newspaper in an attempt to sustain sales that had been swollen by its salacious coverage of the crimes.
Senior police officers who investigated the 1888 prostitute killings were convinced they were not the work of a single man, research by the historian Dr Andrew Cook has uncovered.
A letter boasting about the killings signed by a "Jack the Ripper" was forged by a journalist at the Star newspaper in an attempt to sustain sales that had been swollen by its salacious coverage of the crimes.
Sunday, May 3, 2009 - 23:29
