« Walkabout »: un rite d’initiation à la vie et aux espaces dans le bush australien/an Initiation Rite to Life and Spaces in the Australian Bush

« Walkabout » (La randonnée) is a film by Nicolas Roeg in 1971. Its screenplay was written by Edward Bond from the novel by James Vance Marshall, published in 1959. The film contrasts the wide open spaces of the Australian bush to urban areas of western cities. This contrast of spaces allows the filmmaker to oppose two…

Exposition « MAPPAMUNDI. Art et Cartographie », Toulon/ Exhibition « MAPPAMUNDI. Art & Cartography »

From 16 March to 12 May 2013, hold at the Hotel des Arts in Toulon, the exhibition « Mappamundi. Art & Cartography ». This exhibition proposed to address the many and multiple links between arts and mapping through twenty six major artists who have « worked the map and questioned mapping » for forty years. Du 16 mars au…

« Le procès » ou les espaces d’une bureaucratie aveugle et totalitaire/ »The trial » or spaces of a blind and authoritarian bureaucracy

« The Trial » is a film directed by Orson Welles in 1962. In this adaptation of the eponymous novel by Franz Kafka, Orson Welles, who respected almost the entire story, shows distressing spaces of modern states bureaucracies after the Second World War and the experience of the atomic bomb.. « Le procès » est un film réalisé par…

« Invasion », les espaces d’une ville imaginaire et envahie / « Invasion », spaces of an imaginary and invaded city

Invasion is a film directed in 1969 by the Argentine film director Hugo Santiago, in collaboration with Jorge Luis Borges and Adolfo Bioy Casares. The film tells the story of a city, imaginary or real, besieged by powerful enemies and defended by a handful of men, who maybe are not heroes. They will fight to the…

Dirty Harry – Don Siegel

Dirty  Harry is a 1971 American crime film directed by Don Siegel. It’s the first in the Dirty Harry film series. San Franscico Police Department Inspector « Dirty » Harry Callahan (Clint Eastwood), opposes Scorpio, a serial killer (Andrew Robinson). We can find several spatial machineries in the movie : maps, plans, model. Moreover, we note many…

L’univers des villes pour Jacques Demy/ The World of Cities for Jacques Demy

The exhibition « Le monde enchanté de Jacques Demy«  which takes place from April 10 to August 8, 2013 at the Cinemathèque française in Paris, offers the opportunity to see closely the world of cities of this French filmmaker, who died in 1990. Jacques Demy, close to the « Nouvelle vague« , was a producer, but also a screenwriter,…

Exposition « Les Macchiaioli 1850-1874. Des impressionnistes italiens ? »/ Exhibition « The Macchiaioli 1850-1874. Italian Impressionists? »

The exhibition « Macchiaoli 1850-1874. Italian impressionist? » which held at the Orangerie Museum in Paris from 10 April to 22 July 2013, offers to see the influence that some representatives of this Italian art movement had  on filmmakers, especially for the representation of landscapes. The pictorial movement Macchioioli developed in Florence during the second half of…

L’île d’Hashima est visible sur GoogleStreetView/ Hishima island is visible on GoogleStreetView

The Cubic site has relayed the announcement by Google that Hashima (or « Battleship ») Island is now visible on GoogleStreetView. The Hashima island is an old mine in the Japanese archipelago, located off Nagasaki, which was abandoned in 1974. Since that time no regular human activity takes place there. However the island has served as decor…

Exposition Vues d’en haut / Exhibition Views from above. Centre Pompidou, Metz

Here is an exhibition of Centre Pompidou in Metz which seems specially designed for (e)space&fiction. Views from above considers how an elevated perspective, from aerial photographs or satellite images, has transformed artists’ perception of the world since the mid-nineteenth century. A gold mine of images and ideas we have to visit later in details. L’exposition…

Earth attacks Mars ! La Terre à l’attaque de Mars !

The day of the 50th anniversary of Marilyn Monroe, considered today as one of the biggest stars of American cinema, California received the first images of Mars. How could one fail to notice this dual event occurring on the same day, that the American entertainment world, and especially in California, wanted to produce as well…

L’abstraction géographique de Mondrian / Mondrian’s geographic abstraction

Piet Mondrian (1872-1944), pioneer of abstract painting, is not in theory an artist inclined to evoke real places in his works. Since 1913 and the discovery of cubism in Paris, Mondrian has made it a goal to find out a visual language for reporting the abstract reality behind the natural one and looking for the…

« Dérive et pyschogéographie ». Conférence d’Emmanuel Guy à l’occasion de l’exposition « Guy Debord. Un art de la guerre » à la BnF / « Dérive and pyschogeography ». Conference from Emmanuel Guy in the framework of the exhibition « Guy Debord. Un art de la guerre » at BnF

On April 27 was held at the BnF a conference entitled « Drift and psychogeography » which took place in the framework of the exhibition « Guy Debord. Un art de la guerrer » which takes place from 27 March to 13 July 2013 in Grande Galerie at the BNF (François Mitterrand Site). This conference was given by Emmanuel…

Cartographier livres et oeuvres culturelles / mapping novels and cultural works

We present here two recent French projects of cultural mapping. The first is developed  by the association of libraries of the Ville de Paris. The second named Géoculture, a very ambitious cultural Web and mobile  service with a mapping tool that aim to give access to the cultural works of a region. . Les initiatives…

L’après-midi où les Cités Obscures se sont mises à exister / The afternoon when « Cities of Fantastic » came to life

The meeting with Benoît Peeters and François Schuiten, that we announced here, was held on Thursday, April 11, 2013 from 14h to 20h in the small auditorium of the BnF. A beautiful afternoon with the creators of The cities of Fantastic. Les rencontres avec Benoît Peeters et François Schuiten, que nous avons annoncées ici, ont…

Rencontres avec Schuiten et Peeters à la BnF le 11 avril 2013

François Schuiten and Benoît Peeters, the authors of the cartoon series The Cities of the Fantastic (Les Cités Obscures) who includes the two volumes of La Frontière Invisible about which a first article was recently published on this site, will be present at the BnF (Site François Mitterrand) for two meetings with their public on Thursday, April…

Cartographier les Cités obscures (1): à la recherche de la frontière invisible / Mapping the Cities of the Fantastic (1): searching for the invisible frontier

La frontière invisible is an album of cartoonists François Schuiten and Benoît Peeters. This album includes two volumes and is part of the series « Les Cités obscures« , literary The Dark Cities but translated to English The Cities of the Fantastic. The book portrays the lives of characters who perceive too late the real challenges and…

Point de repère, Musée Paul Dini, Villefranche-sur-Saône

The Paul Dini Museum of Villefranche-sur-Saône (Rhône, France) presents from 03/23/2013 to 09/15/ 2013 an exhibition entitled « Landmark. » Le Musée Paul Dini de Villefranche-sur-Saône (Rhône, France) propose du 23 mars au 15 septembre 2013 une exposition temporaire intitulée : « Point de repère ».Le musée présente ainsi cette exposition : « Depuis que l’Homme est sur Terre,…

La métamorphose des cloportes

La métamophoses des cloportes is a 1965 French crime movie directed by Pierre Granier-Deferre adapted from an Alphonse Boudard’s novel. Three gangsters, Edmond (Charles Aznavour), Arthur (Maurice Biraud) and Rouquemoute (Georges Géret)) plan to seize the content of a safe and ask for Alphonse’s help (Lino Ventura). Alphonse takes control of the operation … and …

Cartographers in a Middle-Age World City / Des cartographes dans une « Ville-Monde » médiévale

Les maîtres cartographes (Mapping Masters) is a series of 6 comic books published between 1992 and 2002, drawn by Paul Glaudel and written by Scotch Arleston. This author is well-known for his large collection of heroic fantasy comic books, including  the famous Lanfeust de Troy‘s series. Les maîtres cartographes est une série BD de 6…

Peut-être (Klapisch) : le présent c’est déjà le futur, ici c’est aussi ailleurs/ Present is already future, here is also elsewhere

Peut-être (1999)  is a film directed by Cédric Klapisch. This film takes place alternately in present time, the Eve of the Year 2000, and a future time, located in 2070. But the film exhibits also an apartment within an Haussmann type building in Paris, and outside of it, located in a wealthy neighborhood of Paris.…

Inception (Nolan) : quand les perceptions de l’espace sont modifiées/ When perceptions of space are modified

Inception is a film written, directed and produced in 2010 by Christopher Nolan. The film tells the story of an « extractor », the hero, who enters the dreams of others to obtain information. Recruited for the sake of his faculties in the field of industrial espionage, the hero has lost his family and had to flee.…