Professor David Peimer
Hollywood and History: Portrayals of Pearl Harbor
Summary
In this talk David Peimer asks, how does Hollywood portray historical events, specifically Pearl Harbor? By looking at “Tora! Tora! Tora!” other movies representing the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, this talk demonstrates the creative tension between historical accuracy and artistic entertainment/licence, a fascinating debate which cannot be reduced to a naive polemic. David Peimer makes the argument that the ultimate power of both history and storytelling is that, over time, they create stories in the memory of a culture which help forge a people’s identity.
Professor David Peimer
David Peimer is a professor of theatre and performance studies in the UK. He has taught at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, and New York University (Global Division), and was a Fulbright Scholar at Columbia University. Born in South Africa, David has won numerous awards for playwriting and directing. He has written eleven plays and directed forty in places like South Africa, New York, Brussels, London, Berlin, Zulu Kingdom, Athens, and more. His writing has been published widely and he is the editor of Armed Response: Plays from South Africa (2009) and the interactive digital book Theatre in the Camps (2012). He is on the board of the Pinter Centre in London.