Traditional historical documentaries strive to project a sense of objectivity, producing a top-down view of history that focuses on public events and personalities, says Efrén Cuevas, a history professor at Universidad de Navarra, Spain.

In his book Filming History from Below, he identifies an emerging trend of “microhistorical documentaries,” focusing on tightly-circumscribed subjects, personal archives, and first-person perspectives.

The Department of History and Moving Histories Project present Dr. Cuevas delivering a free public lecture on the subject Monday, Nov. 28, at 5 p.m. in the Performance Hall, SoCA Armouries.

Drawing on microhistorical film works on the Holocaust, the Cambodian genocide, and the internment of Japanese Americans during the Second World War, he will examine how they push cinema’s capacity as a producer of historical knowledge in new directions.

Cuevas is co-editor of The Man without the Movie Camera: The Cinema of Alan Berliner and Landscapes of the Self: The Cinema of Ross McElwee. Find more info on his website.