Mapping the City in Film - Toward Spatial Humanities - page 149

forms of mediated cartography. 16 Conley also examines the use of maps
in feature films focusing on examples from postwar cinema. 17 C on le y 's
approach to what he terms “cartographic cinema” can be defined in terms
of its focus on the geographic and representational cartographies con-
tained within the diegesis and on the psychological and affective forms
of mapping that are mobilized between film and viewer in terms of his
or her subjectivity and psychic positionality.
Similarly focusing on feature films, Bruno's Atlas of Emotions pro-
vides a detailed theoretical exposition of the ways in which the affec-
tive properties of the cinematic medium play host to mappings of the
psychic and emotional topographies that are given form in the immate-
rial architectures that structure the complex interplay between spatial
textualities of film and the subjective “navigation” of these spaces by
the viewer and spectator. For Bruno, the psychogeographic mobilities
and affective geometries that are unleashed by film and other forms of
moving image culture prompt renewed critical understanding not only
of the ways we might read or “map” the spaces of film but also of how
the forms and architectures of urban space might shape theoretical,
aesthetic, and practical reengagements with cities themselves: “Mapping
is the shared terrain in which the architectural-filmic bond resides - a
terrain that can be fleshed out by rethinking practices of cartography
for travelling cultures, with an awareness of the inscription of emotion
within this motion. Indeed, by way of filmic representation, geography
itself is being transformed and (e)mobilized. . . . A frame for cultural
mappings, film is modern cartography. ” 18 Conley's cartographic cinema
treads a similar theoretical terrain to that of Bruno, noting that even if
a film does not feature a map as part of its narrative, “by nature [film]
bears an implicit relation with cartography. . . . Films are maps insofar
as each medium can be defined as a form of what cartographers call
'locational media.'” 19 In a similar vein, Teresa Castro's discussion of the
“mapping impulse” refers to a “visual regime,” a way of seeing the world
that has cartographic affinities.20 20 Cinematic cartography here refers less
to the presence of maps per se in films than to the cultural, perceptual,
and cognitive processes that inform understandings of place and space.
Focusing on what she describes as “cartographic shapes,” Castro argues
that “panoramas” (viewpoints shaping synoptic and spatially coherent