|
The best thing in an otherwise ordinary film is this simple one-shot device for showing a plane journey from Paris to an outpost in Mali. The other maps in the film are far less interesting:     There are two map rooms in Finye. The first, where the student protesters are printing clandestine tracts, has a world map, a map of Europe and another too indistinct to be made out. The world map is the dominant, signifying the students' openness to the world beyond Mali, and framed from different angles to emphasise the variety of perspectives that such openness entails.        The second, the military governor's office, is dominated by a map of Mali, represented as isolated not only from the world but even from its immediate neighbours, removed from its African context. Within its borders, the country has rivers, a lake, varied terrain and differentiated regions, but beyond its borders there is nothing:     Le Clan (Gaël Morel 2004): Lac de Genève & Haute Savoie Maps often appear in television weather reports or news broadcasts, as background (as above) or foregrounded as a motif (as below):  Where the Heart Is (Matt Williams 2000): United States - Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas Here are eight further instances of maps on tv screens in films:  In Cold Blood (Richard Brooks 1966)  The Man Who Fell To Earth (Nicolas Roeg 1976): United States  Bamako (Abderrahmane Sissako 2006): Mali  Love & Human Remains (Denys Arcand 1993): Canada  Caché (Michael Haneke 2005): Africa & the Americas  La Cérémonie (Claude Chabrol 1995): Europe  Pola X (Leos Carax 1999): France  Jonas qui aura 25 ans en l'an 2000 (Alain Tanner 1976): Switzerland   Hondo's cinemap is a response to and critique of the graphic representations that typically introduced European ethnographic films on African cultures (see examples below).  Les Magiciens du Wanzerbe (Jean Rouch 1947)  Initiation à la danse des possédés (Jean Rouch 1948)  La Circoncision (Jean Rouch 1948)  Les Maîtres du Congo (Henry Brandt & Heinz Sielmann 1959)  Maîtres du Congo (Henry Brandt & Heinz Sielmann 1959)  Sur les traces du renard pale (Recherches en pays Dogon, 1931-1983) (Luc de Heusch 1984)  'Many contemporary filmmakers use techniques of prettiness to access the politics of world. Abdherramane Sissako, for instance, presents in Bamako (2006) a richly textured map of global economics within the visual and auditory space of an African village. (…). Sissako uses decorative patterns and colors to form a dynamic social cartography.'
Rosalind Galt, Pretty: Film and the Decorative Image (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), p.27  'face = map' (D & G: see map 20 for details)
|
