Landscape and Film

Landscape is everywhere in film, but it has been largely overlooked in theory and criticism. This volume of new work will address fundamental questions: What kind of landscape is cinematic landscape? How is cinematic landscape different from landscape painting? How is landscape deployed in the work of such filmmakers as Greenaway, Rossellini, or Antonioni, to name just three? What are differences between the use of landscape in Western filmmaking and in the work of Middle Eastern and Asian filmmakers? How is cinematic landscape related to the idea of a national cinema and questions of identity. The first collection on the idea of landscape and film, this volume will present an impressive international cast of contributors, among them Jacques Aumont, Tom Conley, David B. Clarke, Marcus A. Doel, Peter Rist, and Antonio Costa.

Martin Lefebvre is Associate Professor in the Mel Oppenheim School of Cinema, Concordia University, Montreal.

Part 1: Space, Setting, Landscape 1. The Invention of Place: Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub's Moses and Aaron by Jacques Aumont 2. Between Setting and Landscape in the Cinema by Martin Lefebvre Part 2: National Landscapes, Cultural Identities and Traditions 3. Toward a Genealogy of the American Landscape: Notes on Some Landscapes in Griffith (1908-1912) by Jean Mottet 4. The Course of the Empire: Sublime Landscapes in the American Cinema by Maurizia Natali 5. Asphalt Nomadism: the New Desert in Arab Independent Cinema by Laura Marks 6. The Inhabited View: Landscape in the Films of David Rimmer by Catherine Russell 7. Sites of Meaning: Gallipoli and other Mediterranean Landscapes in Amateur Films, c. 1928-1960 by Heather Nicholson 8. The Presence (and Absence) of Landscape in Silent East Asian Films by Peter Rist Part 3: Early Film Landscapes 9. From Flatland to Vernacular Relativity: the Genesis of Early English Screenscapes by David B. Clarke & Marcus Doel 10. Landscape and Archive: Trips Around the World as Early Film Topic (1896 - 1914) by Antonio Costa Part 4: Landscape auteurs 11. A Walk Through Heterotopia: Peter Greenaway's Landscapes by Numbers by Bridget Elliott & Anthony Purdy 12. Landscape and Perception: On Anthony Mann by Tom Conley 13. The Cinematic Void: Desert Iconographies in Michelangelo Antonioni's Zabriskie Point by Matthew Gandy