Projecting place: Mapping the city in film

Abstract

Drawing on on-going archival research into Liverpool and Merseyside on film, this paper explores the role of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology in historiographical research into film, place and space in an urban setting. Mapping the correlations between categories of genre, date, and location as assessed in relation to records in a spatial database consisting of over 1700 Merseyside films, we examine ways in which cartographic readings of film texts and practices can illuminate historical understandings of urban and regional place-making. Reflecting broader theoretical trends, a growth of interest in cartographic methods in recent historical studies on film is indicative of an emergent ‘spatial turn’ in social science and humanities research. Responding to these developments, we argue that digital and geospatial resources such as those offered by GIS technology enable researchers to: (1) ‘navigate’ the spatial histories attached to landscapes in film; (2) develop new frameworks of analytical enquiry in relation to film, place and memory; and (3) to re-think and reformulate some of the questions critically addressing the ‘place’ of archival images of cities in discourses of cultural memory, regeneration, and urban place-making.