What is Cinematic Cartography?

Maps are ubiquitous in movies. They appear constantly and in a variety of forms: hung on the wall of a classroom, framed in an office, and unfolded by gangsters on a table. In movies maps serve a variety of purposes: They serve as decoration, as a means of location, to aid narration, as metaphors as well as to increase the dramatic tension of a sequence. They can play a prominent role in the unfolding of the action or appear only for a split second behind a closing door. They can serve to address the audience or as a mean of interaction between characters. They can be classic and static, or unique and dynamic. This pervasive presence of diverse cartographic artifacts in films contrasts dramatically with the marginal impact that cinematographic techniques, concepts and artifacts have had on cartography over the course of the last century. There has been substantial use of cartography in cinema but this has had very limited impact on the theory and practice of cartography. The production of this special issue is the first ever dedicated to cinematic cartography, and is an attempt to help address this imbalance. Some of the interactions between geography and cinema have been studied (Mauduit and Henriet 1989; Lukinbeal 2004), while cartographic readings of films have been developed, especially in the important book on cartographic cinema by Tom