Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Nothin',
1985), while the collectively owned Community Productions
Group recorded protests against unpopular legislation such as the ten-
dering of National Health Service cleaning and laundry services to pri-
vate contractors (
Love Me Tender,
1985) and the effects of urban regenera-
tion schemes on local people (
Disappearing Communities,
1989). In these
films, the people of the city, so often subjected to the gaze of others in
city films, record their stories and their protests in the places where they
live and work, a deterritorialization of filmic space in which the symbolic
public spaces of civic and institutional authority are inhabited by the
participatory actions and collective endeavor of its citizens.
Conclusion: Cinematic Cartogr aphy
As we have demonstrated, mapping a city in film in the way outlined in
this chapter enables researchers to (1) navigate the spatial histories at-
tached to landscapes in film; (2) develop new frameworks of analytical
enquiry in relation to film, place, and memory; and (3) rethink and refor-
mulate some of the questions critically addressing the place of archival
images of cities and other locations in the wider cultural landscapes of
memory, heritage, and local/national placemaking.
This chapter has sought to formulate some initial discussions as to
the ways in which GIS resources can inform critical understandings of
the relationship between film practice and the historic built environ-
ment. W hile offering a unique practical tool that is able to push forward
research in this area in significant ways, GIS also presents hitherto unex-
plored and challenging theoretical possibilities insofar as it initiates new
forms of spatial dialogue between the virtual landscapes of the moving
image and the architectural, geographic, and imagined spaces within
which they are embedded. The layering of these geographies in the form
outlined in this essay contributes to the development of an explicitly
spatial and synchronic mode of historiographical engagement with a
city's image-spaces. This coincides with what Lev Manovich suggests is
an epistemological shift toward the adoption of the
database
as the new
symbolic form that can shape critical analysis of film texts and practices
(spatial, vertical, paradigmatic), as opposed to the dominant
narrative
model (diachronic, linear, cause and effect), the syntagmatic form of
