In this project, Antonio Coffee cohosts a podcast with Nicolas McKay and Christopher de La Rosa about movies and history. He and his fellow podcasters explore what they can learn from movies and provide another way for the public to engage with history. Throughout the first eight episodes, they analyzed seven different movies and had one interview with a historian doing working with similar themes. Through these first seven episodes, they have been able to talk about the Texas Borderlands, the history of Broadway, the Cold War, P. T. Barnum, the Japanese response to nuclear testing, Hollywood censorship laws, and Rudyard Kipling. While exploring these themes, Antonio brought his experience as a public historian to the research and promotion of this project.
This project took a while for him to come up with. Originally his capstone was going to be creating a walking tour for the Mission Reach area in conjunction with the National Parks Service, but once the pandemic began, he had trouble reaching his contacts in the Missions and realized that he would need to come up with a new project instead. In the fall of 2020, Antonio created the first episode of this podcast for a project in Dr. Van Hoy’s History of the American West and the Borderlands. Nicolas McKay, Antonio’s friend, and fellow history student back in the undergraduate program helped create an episode where the two talked about The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez. They both enjoyed making the episode and ended up rerecording it because they didn’t like how the first attempt turned out. While getting ready for the recording, Antonio and Nicolas started talking about continuing the podcast by examining other movies and that is how they started Filmcasters. Antonio realized that Filmcasters would be a great project if both of his cohosts would support him in using it as his capstone. Luckily, they did.
To receive updates about Filmcasters, check out their Twitter.
You can listen to Filmcasters below or anywhere you listen to your favorite podcasts.
