Napoléon : la polyvision d’Abel Gance/ Abel Gance’s Polyvision

In 1925, Abel Gance was the first director to use three cameras for shooting his movie Napoleon. By the juxtaposition of the  three images he obtained a very large screen, three times the traditional format. This process, called « Polyvision », allows to increase not only the area shown by the images, but also to multiply the…

Gravity, film géospatial/Geospatial Movie

There is no representational spatial machinery in Gravity, the very impressive film by Alfonso Cuarón. No map, no device for locating characters, no screen for designatind targets. There is no computing tool in this sophisticated but somewhat abandoned technological world where manuals are in binders and where you crank up the retrorockets. In Gravity, you…

L’Île aux fleurs / Ilha das Flores – Furtado

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…

Grey Wolf and Little Red Riding Hood/Le Loup gris et le Petit Chaperon rouge – Bardine

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…

Casablanca: At the Origins of Google Earth

Before Google Earth there was WorldWind and Keyhole (the company that created the application used to develop Google Earth). Before Keyole, there was the movie Powers of Ten (dir. Charles and Ray Eames 1977). Indeed, one of the co-founders of Keyole – Avi Bar-Zeev – recognized the inspirational dimension of Power of Tens in the…