A short, source-conscious journey around the mid-fourteenth-century plague and its imagined aftermath. This is a deliberately compact path: the available films are mostly allegory, horror or literature adaptations rather than direct historically faithful accounts.
Focused introduction to The Black Death, with historical cautions and chapter context.
The Black Death was a devastating pandemic whose mortality affected economies, religion, work and social relationships. Our collection does not yet have a strong documentary screen history of the outbreak. These films reveal later cultural interpretations, not verified case histories.
Plague spread along commercial and travel routes and caused major population loss across much of Europe. Contemporary experiences varied; do not mistake horror tropes for epidemiological explanation.
1347 → 1353
REPRESENTED HISTORY 1347 → 1353
An influential philosophical image of plague-era uncertainty, religious fear and mortality.
A symbolic, existential allegory; no claim to reconstruct actual events or transmission.
REPRESENTED HISTORY 1348
Depicts panic, accusations and the search for meaning amid an imagined 1348 outbreak.
Contains invented violence and horror; depictions of disease, villages and beliefs are not reliable evidence.
Art and literature responded to crisis in diverse ways; demographic shock and social conflict continued long after first epidemic waves.
1348
REPRESENTED HISTORY 1348
Adapts stories associated with Boccaccio’s plague-era literary framing, emphasizing ordinary life and social satire.
Individual tales are fiction, and Pasolini’s adaptation does not present the epidemic as a documentary account.