The Sense of Place in Contemporary Cinema

Abstract

What purpose does place serve in films, when it is not just a background to actions, or indistinguishable from the landscape, or, worse, a simple space to walk through, a kind of neutral territory? This book analyses the notion of place in contemporary cinema, using in particular theories of space that were developed in the fields of geography and anthropology (landscape, territory, site). How do the different forms of places manifest themselves on screen? What are their different aspects, their matric potentialities? Filmmakers as Chantal Akerman, Lisandro Alonso, Pedro Costa, Bruno Dumont, Béla Tarr, Avi Mograbi, Tariq Teguia, Philippe Grandrieux, Danièle Huillet & Jean-Marie Straub, or Sharunas Bartas, chose not to focus solely the cinematic narration on the fate of the characters. They showed telluric spatialities, inhabited territories, existential matrices where ways of doing and of living were mobilized, where forces of emancipation and existential weaknesses were carried out. Welcoming rooms, remarkable transitions, havens for individual and communal destinies: place in cinema sometimes implies the insecurity of an unfinished project, sometimes the solidity of fortifications.