Film Geography

Analyzing the World of Film and the World through Film

Introduction Binling Liang
Questions Binling Liang
What is film geography? Ben Schmid
Why is film geography important? Binling Liang
How are researchers doing film geographies? Binling Liang
- Topics, Themes and case studies
  - Film as Text Binling Liang
  - Film industry geographies Binling Liang
  - Cinematic Cartography Ben Schmid
  - Videography and Documentaries Ben Schmid
- Methodology Ben Schmid
Conclusion and future trend of film geography Ben Schmid

Binling Liang

Ben Schmid

WHAT is film geography?

Film geography is a field of study that examines the complex and layered geographical imaginations created through cinematography, and how these imaginations are interlinked and influence the real world in everyday life.

The subdiscipline draws on various theoretical frameworks, including cultural geography, visual studies, and film studies. It analyzes the spatial dimensions of films, the cinematic techniques used to represent space, and the social and cultural implications of these representations.

WHY is it important ?

Sommerlad, E., 2022, Film Geography, Routledge Handbook of Media Geographies, New York, Routledge : pp. 118–131.

Binling Liang

Lukinbeal, C. and Sommerlad, E., Aug 2022, Doing Film Geography. GeoJournal, vol. 87, no. S1, pp. 1–9.

Binling Liang

Topics, Themes and Case Studies

Film as Text
Film industry geographies
Cinematic Cartography
Videography and Documentaries

Film as Text

Through contextualization of how black spatial imaginaries and black superheroes emerged, and changed in history firstly, Guthrie (2019) analyzed the film Black Panther as text i.e. the crucial scenes, discourse, and filmmakers’ intentions and ambitions, and return to the connections between the film and everyday life at the end which highlights the strategies and actions that producing a film with an alternative viewpoint to make African-descendent peoples imagine the future beyond the dilemmas posed by traumatic legacies of colonialism and enslavement.

Contextualisation Example

"Black Panther’s achievement, in many ways, depended upon the steady development of Black Spatial Imaginaries that were not bound by convention in the art world, as well as on the professional skills and experience of Black artists, writers and filmmakers who proved their worth, and the value, of Black-themed commercial products. " (Guthrie, 2019)

Guthrie, R., 2019, Redefining the Colonial: An Afrofuturist Analysis of Wakanda and Speculative Fiction, Journal of Futures Studies, 24(2): pp. 15–28.

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Film Industry Geographies

Hong Kong was once known as "the Hollywood of the East" and the filmmaking hub of East Asia. Through a broad perspective of regional geography and the adoption of the GPN (Global Production Networks) analysis tool and interviews, Lim (2006) elaborated on the network behind this glorious title, and the impact of the intertwined politico-economic relations between Hong Kong, Mainland China, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia (i.e. Singapore) on the development of Hong Kong's film industry. Nevertheless, Chu's work (2015) examined the SAR New Wave of Hong Kong cinema since the 2010s which shed light on the lives of subaltern groups and delivered alternative stories, as well as the counter-hegemonic resistance of Hong Kong cinema and society. Those two very different perspectives could offer you an insight into the possibilities of looking at the film industry geographies from various lenses.

Film Industry of Hong Kong: a Transnational Perspective

"Offscreen, domestic laborers from Thailand, Sri Lanka, and the Philippines, together with migrants from mainland China, continue to add change to the city’s ethnoscape and the makeup of its local audiences." (Lim, 2006)

"...the market share of Hong Kong-produced films was palpably secured (or defended) through its link to Singapore-based financiers-cumdistributors." (Ibid.)
"The Singapore-based firms strategies to procure Hong Kong as a production base in the 1950s–1970s have been instrumental in developing both local talents in Hong Kong and the film workers coming from Shanghai." (Ibid.)

Film Industry of Hong Kong: a Subaltern Translocal Perspective

Since the 2010s, Hong Kong cinema has experienced a new wave of changes known as SAR New Wave, which offers more diverse stories of the "internally varied and inter-locally related portrayals of Hong Kong and the complex minor-to-minor alternative dialogue, and resistant, counter-hegemonic, nonelite operations of localization and creolization." (Chu, 2015)
"SAR New Wave films portray the intra-local and inter-local dialogue of humane, grounded, open-minded, ordinary people as a resistance to the dehumanizing neo-liberal marketplace, and the spectacles of big budget Hong Kong China coproductions." (Ibid.)
The map below illustrates the trend of filming locally, which is one of the phenomena of the New Wave.

Lim, Kean Fan., (2006) Transnational collaborations, local competitiveness: mapping the geographies of filmmaking in/through Hong Kong, Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography, 88:3, 337-357.

Chu, Yiu-wai., (2015) Toward a New Hong Kong Cinema: beyond Mainland-Hong Kong co-productions, Journal of Chinese Cinemas, 9:2, 111-124,

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Cinematic Cartography

Cinematic cartography is concerned with all practices which combine te worlds of film and cartography. Maps and mappings don't only appear in films. Films can also be spatially analyzed via GIS, offering a great alternative to textual analyze. Following Robert and Hallam (2014) there are five major research fields.

Maps and mappings in movies

This awesome video shows the diversity of how maps are used in film.

Mapping of film production and consumption

This map shows all shooting locations of the movie 'Goodfellas' in New York City and is an example spatial analysis of film.

Movie Mapping and place marketing

The picture shows a map found on a hiking trail in New Zealand. It advertises visiting 'Lord of the Rings' filming locations.

Ben Schmid

Cognitive and emotional mapping

Films influence the way we create our "cognitive maps". Even if they don't include a map, through their visuals they shape our understanding of spaces and places.

Film as a spatial critique

Archive films are often reviewed and studied as a form of spatial critique. This video shows Mainz and the surrounding area after the war. It could be used to critique the non-rebuiltment of the old 'Hindenburgbrücke'. Today there is a route of 84km between Mainz and Koblenz without a single bridge crossing the rhine.

Videography and documentaries

Film can also be used as a medium of communication, a tool or a result of academic research. Through videography the production of geographical knowledge can be achieved. The acquisition and analysis of qualitative video data and the production of films should be part of a geographers toolset. Research in this area opens ana rray of new possibilities in studying and teaching geography.

This documentary by Paul Hummel is a great example on how film can be used in geographical research. For his master thesis he conducted field work in Mexico, studying on indigenous and political music. The results have been translated into this 45 min. documentary. It shows how videography can be a result of academic research.

Meanwhile there are a lot of films produced by geographers, about geographers or analyzed by geographers. A lot of them can be found on https://www.filmgeographies.com/.

Ben Schmid

Methodology

Film geography offers a broad array of methodological approaches possible. Whether you choose a quantitative, qualitative or multi-method approach, doing film geography can be highly versatile depending on which topic is analyzed. A great example is Julian Zschoke's (2022) multi-method approached case study on the Nate Starkman Building in L.A.

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This study on cinema geography emphasizes the benefits of a mixed-methods approach, blending quantitative techniques like spatial analysis with qualitative methods, including fieldwork and interviews with industry experts, alongside textual analysis. This multifaceted approach allows researchers to delve deeper into the economic, spatial, and cultural dimensions of film production.

But, of course, there are even more methods which are used by researchers in different case studies. Examples could be inter-film comparising, film industry data analyzing or mapping geopolitical situations of film industries.

Ben Schmid

The future of Film Geography

As it can be seen above, the subdiscipline of film geography offers an incredible range of possibilities in teaching, studying or creating new knowledge. Combining modern technological approaches with proven methods enables for this field to be exictingly immersive. Asking about the spatial implications of making or consuming film contributes to a greater understanding of our digitalized world and the impact media and film have on our lives. Film Geography will therefore continue to be a rising discipline offering interesting research and study opportunities.