In the early 70’s, the young Maxime le Forestier, 21, spent a month in a house of San Francisco, experiencing the life of a hippie community. One or two years later, this stay inspired him to write the song San Francisco: « There is a sky blue house/Built right up against the hill/ They all come…
Easy Rider (Hopper,1968) is considered as the typical road movie, even as a manifesto of this type. The film was directed by the American actor Dennis Hooper, who died in May 2010. In late 2008, the Cinemathèque Française presented a wonderful exhibition entitled « Dennis Hopper and the New Hollywood ». As Matthew Orleans, curator of the…
On the occasion of the 25th International Cartographic Conference, an Art & cartography exhibit will take place in Saint-Mandé (near Paris). Under the title « Artists visit again the representation of the world the exhibit gathers several artists : Michel Granger, Hervé Baudry, Ghislaine Escande, Philippe Favier, Michel Guéranger, Jean-Michel Hequet Vudici, Emma Malig, David Renaud, Nathalie…
RoboCop is a 1987 science fiction and action film directed by Paul Verhoeven. The Detroit Police Departement is, by contract, under the control of a private consortium, OCP (Omni Consumer Product). But the hidden objective of OCP is to destroy the old town of Detroit and replace it with a new urban complex, Delta City.…
Great Guns (1941) is an American comedy directed by Monty Banks. Laurel and Hardy are the domestic servants of a rich and capricious boss. When the United States get involved in World War II, the boss joins the Army. Both friends decide then to enlist also in order to continue serving him. Many maps are…
The Blog.vodkaster.com is a blog dedicated to the video platform Vodkaster.com which aims to index movies through short excerpts. One of the posts presents about « 250 greatest movies of all times » as a subway map. See also this reference to the same technique applied to Rock’nRoll. Le site Blog.vodkaster.com accompagne la plateforme vidéo collaborative consacrée…
As clearly described in its subtitle, the movie Zig-Zag (dir. Raul Ruiz 1980) is « a didactical fiction about cartography. » This “cine-cartographic” essay navigates between the documentary and the fiction, the map and the territory, the dream and the reality. Made in the context of the art exhibit “Cartes et figures de la terre” that took…
Eric Rohmer was part of the « Nouvelle Vague » movement that radically changed the French cinema at the end of the ’50s and during the ’60s. He filmed the French urban landscapes and its profound transformation during these years. He has always been attentive in his films to the importance of urban places and more generally to…
(e)space & fiction 