On film and territory: Treading ground with Sacro GRA

Abstract

In this article, I change the lens through which we normally look at space in film, transcending at once the national/transnational cinema dichotomy and hierarchical geographical scalings and generic categories that are sometimes unfit to account for a film’s production of space. I propose that the geopolitical notion of ‘territory’ can focus our attention on the critical situatedness of a certain type of cinema while also facilitating formal and industrial types of film analysis. The notion of territory, intended as a geographical space shaped by humans and a geographical expression of power, can be mobilized to analyse films that reveal and critique the social actualization of the material potentialities of specific places. Gianfranco Rosi’s cinema is a case in point. Set along Rome’s ring road, Rosi’s Sacro GRA (‘Holy GRA’) (2013) sits uncomfortably in both the city symphony or road movie genres and calls for different categories of analysis.