Cinematic urban geographies

Thu 3 October 2013 - Fri 4 October 2013

Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH)

The Cambridge conference will offer a unique opportunity to debate issues of cinematic geographies, filmic urban characterisation within the cultural & social dimension and database cinema (metadata) as well as film archives and the locative media potential afforded by the new generation of mobile phones.

The conference will take place over two days – corresponding to two complementary themes:

Theme 1 probes the many trajectories and points of contact between the cinema and its topographic context. This opens a number of sub-themes, including:

films as sites of memories –lieux de mémoires (after Pierre Nora)
‘movie centric’ maps of cities – map-reading and ciné-tourism

cinematic cityscapes within social & cultural practices

cartographic cinema: the role of maps in films
cinematic cartography: the cinematic appeal of maps
Theme 2 is concerned with the process of cinematic restitution at the place where films were shot – probing the issue of bringing the invisible filmic material layered over the city to life –through the sub-themes:

visualising the cinematic urban archaeology of a city

geo-locating movies in the city – mobile Apps

public engagement with local films through social networking
database cinema – meta cinema – cinemetrics

virtual cinematic sites of memories
Invited speakers include:

Charlotte Brunsdon (Film Studies, University of Warwick)
Tom Conley (Visual/Environmental Studies, Harvard)
Richard Coyne (Architectural Computing, Edinburgh College of Art)
Dan Cruickshank (History of Art, BBC)
Roland-Francois Lack (French Studies, UCL)
Elizabeth Lebas (History of Art and Architecture, Middlesex University)
Steven Pile (Human Geography, The Open University)
Andrew Prescott (Digital Humanities, King’s College London)
Mark Shiel (Film Studies, King’s College London)
Peter Von Bagh (Film Historian and Director, Helsinki)

Cost: £60, £35