The place of space in film historiography

Abstract

This essay applies recent theoretical work on the concept of space by scholars in social and cultural geography to the history of the social experience of moviegoing. In it the author argues that the spatiality of the experience of cinema needs to be foregrounded in film history and he uses his research on the history of moviegoing in the American South during the so-called 'Jim Crow' period of racial apartheid (1890-1965) to demonstrate what a re-theorized notion of cinema spatiality might add to film historiography more generally.