Program 2023

Can lost history be recaptured by today’s storytellers? How do we ensure the history of women and non-binary people is incorporated into the historical record?

With the rapid adoption of generative AI and the growing use of these technologies by the media industry, we face new challenges: biases in training and source data and inherent flaws in the technology of machine learning can lead to an imbalance, even to the point that some historical events disappear from the collective memory. How can technology be used to manipulate our individual as well as our collective memory?

With recommendations from a cohort of commissioning editors, historians, and funders we take a look back at the outstanding history productions of the last year across all platforms and formats. What are the most important, most influential, most innovative, and most daring history productions?

The journalists that go into conflict zones are the eyes and ears for us all. The choices they make – their perspective – can become the history of record. Does objectivity exist in the midst of battle? What influence do journalists have on the outcome of the wars they cover?

This panel will provide the keys to understanding how the Web and social media shape what we know about ourselves and our past, and the tools for filmmakers to engage in correcting the digital record.

The Library of Alexandria was the greatest repository of knowledge in the ancient world – until it was no more. Archives, despite their seeming permanence, are not indestructible. What do states, societies, communities, and individuals gain through preservation? What is lost when an archive disappears, becomes inaccessible, or falls into disuse?