Tous les dispositifs de la fiction que l’on peut trouver dans la littérature, la peinture, le cinéma,le jeu vidéo ou autres pour figurer l’espace : cartes, globes, noms, interfaces informatiques et autres objets …
All fictional apparatus found in literature, painting, cinema, video games, or other media to represent space: maps, globes, names, computer interfaces, and other objects…
In Meangirls, a 2004 American teen comedy film, we find an interesting example of social mapping. Cady is a new student who does not know anyone yet in North Shore high school. Janis draws for her a map of the cafeteria that presents the various groups of students and where they sit. It is indeed very…
Village of the damned is a 1960 movie directed by Wolf Rilla. It is an adaptation of John Wyndham’s science fiction novel, The Midwich Cuckoos. All inhabitants and animals of Midwich, UK, fall unconscious for several hours. Anyone entering in a perimeter around the village loses consciousness too. A few months later, all women and…
Isle of Flowers is a 1989 Brazilian short film by Jorge Furtado about globalization.You can watch it (12 min) on line. Here are the part one and the part two in English). The film starts with a spinning globe and the next shot focuses on a field of tomatoes. A voice locates the action very…
Duane Hanson ( 1925-1996 ) is an American sculptor known for the realistic and life-sized works of people he created with various materials (polyester resin, fiberglass, bronze, Bondo). His work is associated with hyperrealism and Pop Art movement. One of these works, Tourists, represents a couple of tourists, caricatures of the stereotypical American tourists. In…
Released in 1966, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (It buono, brutto it, it cattivo) is a western directed by Sergio Leone. It is the last Sergio Leone’s westerns with Clint Eastwood. In this film he co-starred with Lee Van Cleef and Eli Wallach. The three protagonists are in search of a treasure. One…
Many today American TV series are very close to a B-movie from the end of the 40s, He walked by night (1948), directed by Alfred L. Werker (and Anthony Mann (uncredited)). This incredibly modern movie presents all the codes of the detective series and movies (solidarities, widowhood, systematic police track down, suspicion of murderous cop,…
Elective Affinities (1996) is a movie directed by Paolo and Vittorio Taviani based on the novel by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Edouard (Jean-Hugues Anglade) and Charlotte (Isabelle Huppert), a couple of aristocrats, invited a childhood friend of Edouard (Fabrizio Bentivoglio) to join them in their villa in Tuscany. This friend is an architect. In the…
Released in 1965 Le corniaud is a French road-movie directed by Gérard Oury. Leopold Saroyan, godfather of a syndicate of gangsters, persuades Antoine Maréchal to drive a Cadillac from Naples to Bordeaux. He does not know that various illicit substances are hidden in the vehicle in order to cross illegally the border. During a meeting,…
Filmed in 1966, The Swimmer by Frank Perry was a commercial failure when it was released in 1968 and has long been misunderstood. However, it is an intense and disturbing masterpiece. One morning between late summer and early autumn, a man in a bathing suit (B. Lancaster) enters the garden of a beautiful house and…
In Evil Dead, Sam Raimi uses two ways to indicate where the characters of his movie are coming from and where they are. Dans Evil Dead, Sam Raimi nous donne indirectement deux informations : d’où viennent les protagonistes et où ils se trouvent.
Created in collaboration between Yona Friedman, a theoretician of architecture and Jean-Baptiste Decavèle, a photographer and a videographer, this exhibition transposed the fictitious geography of an island situated in the far north of Canada to the middle of the Lake of Vassivière in Limousin. Visitors were invited to discover the mapping of the imaginary Balkis…
Just a short notice about an update of the post « Did you hear about the Morgans ». The Making Of on the DVD gives more information about the map of Google that appears in the movie. Une simple annonce à propos du billet sur « Où sont passés les Morgan » dont le contenu a été actualisé grâce…
Predator is a 1987 movie directed by John McTiernan. In Val Verde, a country bordering Guatemala, a joint task force, led by Major Alan « Dutch » Schaefer (Arnold Schwarzenegger), is assigned to rescue hostages in the jungle. The group is hunted by an extraterrestrial creature: the Predator. Two spatial machineries appear in the movie. One is…
The X-Men are a group of superheroes created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. There adventures were published in X-Men # 1 by Marvel Comics in September 1963. The book was adapted for three movies released in 2000, 2003 and 2006 (plus a prequel in 2009 telling the story of one of the main characters:…
The Gingerbread Man (1998) is a thriller directed by Robert Altman. The lawyer Rick Magruder (Kenneth Branagh) helps young and pretty Mallory Doss, harassed by his father. He launches a procedure to confine him to a mental institution. Several maps are shown in the movie. The Gingerbread Man est un thriller réalisé par Robert Altman…
Lola is a sort of abstract ballet movie whose the scene is the town of Nantes. The film is about wait and boredom, planned departures and expected returns . There are two world maps in the film, both of them related to the character Roland Cassard. Both are a bit mysterious and fully cinematic. Both…
Braveheart is an American historical movie directed by and starring Mel Gibson and released in 1995. The film refers to the life of William Wallace, hero and symbol of Scottish independence. In the late thirteenth century, Wallace united the Scottish clans and fought the forces of King Edward Ist of England, who attempted to invade…
As already shown in this post, geographic space plays a fundamental role in the work of Hergé. In The ‘Manitoba’ No Reply, first volume of The Secret Ray from The Adventures of Jo, Zette and Jocko, published in 1952, the liner SS Manitoba indicates its position by radio, remains silent for 20 hours and send…
Suddenly is an American movie directed by Lewis Allen and released in 1954. In the late 40’s, Tod Shaw, the sheriff of Suddenly in California learns that a special train with the President of the United States on board is going to stop in the small town. Shortly afterwards, a Secret Service team arrives, led…
Kendama is the second short-movie of Jam Films, a project bringing together seven Japanese directors. A kendama is a Japanese cup-and-ball game… In this film, a company director offers his employee one of this object to show his gratitude … But it is actually hiding the plan of a treasure hunt that leads to the…
The Beach is a 2000 drama film by Danny Boyle based on The Beach, a 1996 novel by Alex Garland. Richard (Leonardo DiCaprio), a young American backpacking in Thailand, came to Southeast Asia with the intention of experiencing something radically different from his familiar life. He meets Daffy a crazy man (Robert Carlyle) who is…
Company man is a 2000 movie directed by Peter Askin and Douglas McGrath. Washington, 1962: the CIA agent Alan Quimp assisted by is immediate superior, the Officer Hickle are heard by two American Senators: Biggs and Farwoods. Quimp has to explain his implication in the crisis of Bay of Pigs. Two maps appear in the…
National Treasure (released in 2004) and National Treasure: Book of Secrets (released in 2007) are two movies directed by Jon Turteltaub. Both films have the same narrative structure : Benjamin Gates (starring Nicolas Cage) goes to treasure hunt. By solving different clues he finds a treasure map. He succeeds in deciphering it to finally discover…
The Hitch-Hiker is a film noir directed in 1953 by Ida Lupino. Two men in a car give a man a lift but the hitch-hiker turns out to be a psychopath who kidnaps them. The police tracks the criminal. Several maps are used in this movie. Le voyage de la peur est un film noir…
Garri Bardine is a Russian animation director. In 1990 he created Grey Wolf and Little Red Riding Hood (Russian: » Серый волк энд Красная Шапочка, Krasnaya Chapotchka seriy Volk i »), a claymation film. The movie was adapted from the famous children’s story Little Red Riding Hood as a musical. Living in Moscow, the mother of…
The Parallax View is a 1974 thriller film directed by Alan J. Pakula. Newspaper reporter Joe Frady (Warren Beatty) is investigating a secret organization, the Parallax Corporation, whose objective is political assassination. A cause d’un assassinat est un thriller dirigé par Alan J. Pakula en 1974. Le reporter de presse Joe Frady (Warren Beatty) enquête…
16th June 2010 : the British PM David Cameron apologized to the families of victims for the killings that occurred on 30th January 1972 in Londonderry, Northern Ireland. The film Bloody Sunday directed in 2002 by Paul Greengrass narrates the events that occurred this day. Several scenes depict British officers annotating the progression of the…
In 2005, almost 30 years after Dawn of the dead (see this post) second part of his « Dead series », George Romero directed a fourth movie Land of the dead. No paper maps here … Time has passed and computers and GPS are now available. En 2005, presque 30 ans après avoir réalisé Zombie (voir ce…
The Annuity (1972) is a French comedy directed by Pierre Tchernia and based on a screenplay by Pierre Tchernia and René Goscinny. In this movie, two quick shots (a few seconds each) show two different maps: a school map of France drawn by hand and a topographic map. Le viager est une comédie française réalisée…
« Who is the murderer of the subway? Who is this man who pushes innocents under the train? And who are its victims? » Such is the plot of the thriller written by Frederic H. Fajardie in 1982. Police inspector Padovani (recurring character in the work of Fajardie) investigates. During a briefing with his staff, he says:…
(e)space & fiction 