Maps, along with signage and landmarks, are clearly part of the film’s own deep topography, but Rogers doesn’t rely on them to show how Nick Papadimitriou does his chorographic work. He shows us instead Nick walking, Nick stopping to gesticulate, Nick turning to look in another direction, Nick pointing, Nick walking on again…. All are means of situating us in a territory defined more by its moments of retrieved memory than by the functional lines that cross it.
n.b.: Given his passion for the North Middlesex/South Hertfordshire Escarpment (see here and here), I’d say Nick Papadimitriou was less of a topographer than a chorographer, chorography being ‘the art of describing or mapping a particular region or district’.
(You can watch The London Perambulator in full here.)