Cinema's Mapping Impulse: Questioning Visual Culture

Abstract

This paper explores the links between cinema and cartography, focusing on the notion of a 'mapping impulse'. The 'mapping impulse' is less about the presence of maps in a certain visual landscape and more about the processes that underlie the understanding of space. In our analysis, we will therefore pay less attention to the symptomatic presence of maps in films, focusing instead on what we call 'cartographic shapes': panoramas, atlases and aerial views. The point of the matter is that a strong visual and rhetorical connection between cinema and cartography is not as surprising as it might initially appear.

Keywords:

• AERIAL VIEWS
• ATLAS
• CARTOGRAPHIC REASON
• CINEMA
• FILM
• MAPPING IMPULSE
• PANORAMAS
• VISUAL CULTURE