Virtual Voyages

Cinema and Travel

Autor: Ruoff, Jeffrey; Gunning, Tom; Rabinovitz, Lauren; Altman, Rick; Peterson, Jennifer Lynn
Editor: Duke University Press
ISBN: 9780822337010
eISBN Pdf: 9780822387947
Lloc de publicació: Durham , United States
Any de publicació digital: 2006
Mes: Gener
Pàgines: 312
DDC: 791.43/62
Idioma: Anglés

Descripció

Virtual Voyages illuminates the pivotal role of travelogues within the history of cinema. The travelogue dominated the early cinema period from 1895 to 1905, was central to the consolidation of documentary in the 1910s and 1920s, proliferated in the postwar era of 16mm distribution, and today continues to flourish in IMAX theaters and a host of non-theatrical venues. It is not only the first chapter in the history of documentary but also a key element of ethnographic film, home movies, and fiction films. In this collection, leading film scholars trace the intersection of technology and ideology in representations of travel across a wide variety of cinematic forms. In so doing, they demonstrate how attention to the role of travel imagery in film blurs distinctions between genres and heightens awareness of cinema as a technology for moving through space and time, of cinema itself as a mode of travel.

Some contributors take a broad view of travelogues by examining the colonial and imperial perspectives embodied in early travel films, the sensation of movement that those films evoked, and the role of live presentations such as lectures in our understanding of travelogues. Other essays are focused on specific films, figures, and technologies, including early travelogues encouraging Americans to move to the West; the making and reception of the documentary Grass (1925), shot on location in Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran; the role of travel imagery in 1930s Hollywood cinema; the late-twentieth-century 16mm illustrated-lecture industry; and the panoramic possibilities presented by IMAX technologies. Together the essays provide a nuanced appreciation of how, through their representations of travel, filmmakers actively produce the worlds they depict.

Contributors. Rick Altman, Paula Amad, Dana Benelli, Peter J. Bloom, Alison Griffiths, Tom Gunning, Hamid Naficy, Jennifer Lynn Peterson, Lauren Rabinovitz, Jeffrey Ruoff, Alexandra Schneider, Amy J. Staples

CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Jeffrey Ruoff Introduction: The Filmic Fourth Dimension:Cinema as Audiovisual Vehicle
I Traveling Machines Space, Time, Difference
- Tom Gunning ‘‘The Whole World Within Reach’’: Travel Images without Borders
- Lauren Rabinovitz From Hale’s Tours to Star Tours: Virtual Voyages, Travel Ride Films, and the Delirium of the Hyper-Real
- Rick Altman From Lecturer’s Prop to Industrial Product:The Early History of Travel Films
I I Travelogues and Silent Cinema
- Jennifer Lynn Peterson ‘‘The Nation’s First Playground’’:Travel Films and the American West, 1895–1920
- Paula Amad Between the ‘‘Familiar Text’’ and the ‘‘Book of the World’’: Touring the Ambivalent Contexts of Travel Films
- Hamid Naficy Lured by the East: Ethnographic and Expedition Films about Nomadic Tribes—The Case of Grass (1925)
- Peter J. Bloom Trans-Saharan Automotive Cinema:Citroën-, Renault-, and Peugeot-Sponsored Documentary Interwar Crossing Films
- Alexandra Schneider Homemade Travelogues: Autosonntag—A Film Safari in the Swiss Alps
I I I Travelogues in the Sound Era
- Dana Benelli Hollywood and the Attractions of theTravelogue
- Amy J. Staples ‘‘The Last of the Great (Foot-Slogging) Explorers’’:Lewis Cotlow and the Ethnographic Imaginary in Popular Travel Film
- Jeffrey Ruoff Show and Tell: The 16mm Travel Lecture Film
- Alison Griffiths Time Traveling imax Style: Tales from the Giant Screen
Works Cited
Contributors
Index