Both the Showman and this issue of GeoJournal beg the same question: in what sense ‘film’? No doubt ‘film geography’ will keep us entertained for aeons to come, but I wager that few will have given much thought to this enigmatic word-‘film’-which the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) traces back to the Old English filmen, membrane, which is of Germanic origin, cognate with the Old Frisian filmene, that referred to a part of the human body, probably skin ultimately cognate with fell, the skin or hide of an animal. “The model for the sciences of matter is the ‘origami,’ … or the art of folding,” says Gilles Deleuze ( 1993: 6), and that model will come to the fore as we pass from the cutting of the moving image to the hinging of movement-images, time-images, and crystal-images (Deleuze, 1986, 1989).Īlthough the Showman’s article was penned in 1897, barely 18 months after the Cinématographe snatched the limelight from many decades’ worth of experimentation and innovation in the art and science of conjuring ‘moving pictures’ and ‘animated photographs,’ its passing reference to ‘films’ speaks to an unresolved ambiguity that continues to disturb this issue of GeoJournal, which is devoted to ‘film geography’-a well-established field of geographical research whose fortunes, I suspect, are far from flagging (Cresswell & Dixon, 2002 Ernwein, 2020 Escher, 2006 Lukinbeal & Zimmermann, 2006, 2008 Sharp & Lukinbeal, 2015). Indeed, the surface of the Earth, as ground and dwelling-place of humanity, was once known as the ‘fold’ (Old English, folde), and one need only scratch the surface of contemporary human geography to unearth tell-tale signs that betray its filmic basis: from the infrastructures and superstructures of yesteryear to the newfangled assemblages and multiplicities of today. Nevertheless, I would argue that since geography is primarily concerned with earth-surface processes-terrestrial, oceanic, and atmospheric biochemical and geophysical biopolitical and geopolitical human and nonhuman etcetera-then focusing on geography as film is actually an extreme close-up of its laminated structure, and its folding and unfolding. Depending on one’s perspective this reverse shot may seem like a long shot. In this paper I want to use the Showman’s passing mention of ‘faulty films’ as a way into a consideration of the ‘film’ of ‘film geography,’ of the ‘film’ covered by ‘film geography,’ and of the ‘film’ that covers ‘film geography.’ As this slightly peculiar coverall phrasing implies, my concern is with neither the geography of film, nor the geography in film, nor the geography from film (whether from the side of production and pre/post-production, or from the side of consumption and reception, or else from the side of circulation and distribution, or even from behind the fourth wall of simulation and simulacra), but rather with geography as film, a literal ‘film’ geography or ‘filmic’ geography: the film of geography, the film in geography, and the film from geography. As well as lambasting shoddy equipment, incompetent operators, and inept exhibitors, whose collective failure to use cameras, tripods, projectors, and screens correctly was bringing ‘animated photography’ into disrepute, the Showman also claimed that “films too are equally at fault” (The Showman, 1897: 103). living pictures, motion pictures, movies, films, and the flicks) had “already begun to flag” (The Showman, 1897: 103). In the June 1897 issue of The Optical Magic Lantern Journal and Photographic Enlarger, less than two years after the legendary public debut of the Lumière brothers’ Cinématographe in Paris in December 1895, an article entitled “Animated photographs and projecting machines” by ‘the Showman’ noted that public interest in the novelty of ‘animated photographs’ (a.k.a. The third splits open and unfolds the two faces of film, namely the ‘movement-image’ and the ‘time-image.’ By way of conclusion, the paper ends its flaying of film geography with a ‘stirring still’ taken from Michael Madsen’s (2010) Into Eternity: A Film for the Future, which documents the construction of Onkalo, the world’s first deep-geological nuclear-waste disposal facility that must remain undisturbed for at least 100,000 years once the tomb is sealed in the early twenty-second century.Ī film operates through what it withdraws from the visible. The second touches a raw nerve by channelling the power of the false. The first part shatters the conception of film as a re-presentation. To get under the skin of film geography, the paper proceeds in three parts. Inspired by the distinction that Gilles Deleuze drew between the ‘movement-image’ and the ‘time-image,’ the paper considers the ‘film’-the ‘skin’-of ‘film geography,’ not in terms of the customary geography of film, the geography in film, or the geography from film, but rather in terms of geography as film, a literal ‘film’ geography or ‘filmic’ geography.
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