Jonathan Abel, Jennifer Boittin, and Samuel Frederick, “CINEmap: Geotagging Global Cinema”
CINEmap consists of two interrelated digital projects: (1) a database of time-stamped film scenes with their corresponding global coordinates, and (2) an interactive mapping website that represents this data. The film database will store important facts about each film, such as genre; dates of production and release; gender, race, and nationality of actors and directors; as well as diegetic information. By selecting from this data set through the interactive website, scholars and students can produce various (and potentially layered) maps. One would, for instance, be able to produce maps that show in what parts of which cities the majority of new wave films in France, Germany, and Japan were shot; or when mountains become important markers of nation in film history; or even maps that show where gangsters tend to die in 1940s films as opposed to 1970s films. CINEmap will thus be the first research project to crystallize the interconnectedness of cinema and space via a clear visualization. Drawing on CINEmap as a reference and resource, film scholars, historians, and geographers from around the world will be able to make claims about the relationships of certain spaces (cities, studios, countrysides, parks, rivers, etc.) to particular themes (auteurs, poverty, race, gender, violence, etc.).