(e)space & fiction is about the relations between space and fiction (novels, movies, paintings, music, comics, art works …). This Timeline displays a collection of spatial machineries used to represent space in fiction, as maps or narratives or others.
(e)space & fiction s’intéresse aux relations entre l’espace et la fiction (romans, films, peinture, musique, BD…). Cette fresque temporelle présente une collection de dispositifs utilisés dans les œuvres pour figurer l’espace: récits, cartes …
http://spacefiction.wordpress.com
Created by joliveau on 14/05/2011
Last updated: 15/10/12 at 04:24
Kiki’s Delivery Service is an animated film realized in 1989 by Hayo Miyazaki from a book by Eiko Kadono and illustrated by Akiko Ayashi. The story is about a young witch who, at the age of 13, must leave home, like all young witches, and has to go to a new city for one year. There, [...]
http://spacefiction.wordpress.com/2012/09/28/kiki-la-petite-sorciere-ou-linitiation-a-la-lecture-des-cartes/
About 800 American films evoke Paris, making the French capital by far the most represented foreign city in American cinema. One could almost speak of « Film about Paris » as a specific genre (Antoine de Baecque). The exhibition Paris vu par Hollywood presents this cinematographic American outlook on Paris, between tourist clichés, cultural stereotypes and the invention [...]
http://spacefiction.wordpress.com/2012/09/22/paris-vu-par-hollywood-exhibition-exposition/
The fourth animation movie of the Ice Age series offers us a very fancy version of the theory of continental drift! Here, the upper mantle convection currents are not anymore responsible for the movements of the crust. The cause is the rotation of a tiny core similar to a wheel in a hamster cage. Some other [...]
http://spacefiction.wordpress.com/2012/09/15/ice-age-a-new-theory-of-the-continental-drift-lage-des-glaces-4-une-nouvelle-theorie-de-la-derive-des-continents/
In 1994 and 1995, the artist and engraver Marc Jurt and the writer Michel Butor initiated an artistic collaboration inspired by maps; all kind of maps : city maps or aerial photographs, world maps or topographic maps, aeronautical maps or meteorological maps. Marc Jurt started with geographical documents and juxtaposed or superimposed engravings or paintings [...]
http://spacefiction.wordpress.com/2012/09/09/carte-certifiee-conforme-a-notre-imagination-une-geographie-parallele-de-marc-jurt-et-michel-butor/
The exhibition Paris en Chansons is now closed but the interactive map is still on line : http://www.chansons.paris.fr/carto. Dans le cadre de l’exposition, maintenant terminée, Paris en Chansons, une jolie carte interactive des lieux évoqués dans les chansons françaises est en ligne : http://www.chansons.paris.fr/carto. Classé dans:Flash info, Maps/Cartes, Music/Musique Tagged: chanson, Paris, Song
http://spacefiction.wordpress.com/2012/09/04/songs-of-paris-the-mapla-carte-de-paris-en-chansons/
On (e)space and fiction we already have written about tattoos (Prison Break, Waterworld). But we present here a non fictional example. The Long March  was a military retreat undertaken by the Red Army of the Communist Party of China to escape the Tchang Kaï-chek’s Kuomintang army, during the Chinese Civil war. From 2002 to 2005, [...]
http://spacefiction.wordpress.com/2012/08/31/the-long-march-la-longue-marche-qin-ga/
About a Mountain is an essay by John d’Agata about nuclear waste issue. The book has another title in the French edition (Yucca Mountain) and the cover represents a face drawn with the traditional cartographic symbols. The illustration does not exist on the original book’s cover. Why ? Publié en 2012 en France, Yucca Montain [...]
http://spacefiction.wordpress.com/2012/08/22/yucca-montain-john-dagata-une-carte-entre-verite-et-exactitude/
The Conquest is a biographical film about Nicolas Sarkozy’s rise to power. La conquête est un film biographique qui évoque l’ascension au pouvoir de Nicolas Sarkozy. English Français Reference English The Conquest is a biographical film about Nicolas Sarkozy’s rise to power from his appointment as Minister of Interior in 2002 to May 6, 2007, [...]
http://spacefiction.wordpress.com/2012/08/17/laconquete/
The exhibition « Circuler. Quand nos mouvements façonnent les villes » held at the Cité de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine at the Palais de Chaillot in Paris from April 4, is ending August 26, 2012. This exhibition deals with urban spaces and with space between cities. It also presents how cities have evolved, both in their principles [...]
http://spacefiction.wordpress.com/2012/08/16/circuler-quand-nos-mouvements-faconnent-les-villes/
Ni à vendre ni à louer is a French comedy by Pascal Rabaté. Several stories intertwine in this offbeat film without a word. A spatial machinery can be found in this film that we already mentioned twice (Dogville et Bob la flambeur): a 1:1 scale plan. Ni à vendre ni à louer est une comédie [...]
http://spacefiction.wordpress.com/2012/08/08/ni-a-vendre-ni-a-louer/
The filmmaker Chris Marker, born in 1921 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, died July 29, 2012, the day of his 91st birthday. In the work she has devoted to Chris Marker (*), Catherine Lupton evokes his « desire to see and show the world« . Above all, she makes him « one of the most extraordinary and influential filmmakers of our [...]
http://spacefiction.wordpress.com/2012/07/30/disparition-de-chris-marker-un-cineaste-exigeant-de-lespace-et-de-ses-traces-dans-les-memoires-individuelles-et-collectives/
Matthiew Cusick is an American artist born in New York in 1970 and currently working in Dallas. Among other techniques he uses acrylic with inlaid map fragments from different kinds : school atlases, topographic maps or road maps. He also simply sticks maps as overlaid layers. He composes beautiful landscapes viewed from above or at [...]
http://spacefiction.wordpress.com/2012/07/29/the-geographical-timelines-of-matthew-cusick/
The mysterious tool of the Quiz # 2 is a wire that John (Kieffer Sutherland)Â made for his sun to visually measure the progressive enlargement of the planet Melancholia that is approaching Earth. It is an archaic version of the telescope also used in the movie and it symbolize in some way the regression to [...]
http://spacefiction.wordpress.com/2012/07/20/quiz-2-answer-reponse/
« La cour secrète des Arcanes » is an animation film directed by Pascal Morelli in 2001. This is a free adaptation of one of stories of Corto Maltese, the famous adventurer invented by Italian designer Hugo Pratt. The film includes scenes from several albums, mainly « La maison dorée de Samarkand « . In this album, maps are [...]
http://spacefiction.wordpress.com/2012/07/16/la-cour-secrete-des-arcanes/
Quiz n°2. The answer on this site on 2012/07/20 : / La réponse sur ce site le : 20/07/2012 Classé dans:Cinema/Cinéma, Maps/Cartes, Quiz, Spatial machineries/Dispositifs spatiaux Tagged: Lars von Trier
http://spacefiction.wordpress.com/2012/07/12/quiz-2-melancholia-the-mysterious-tool-loutil-mysterieux/
Æon Flux is a 2005 science fiction movie directed by Karyn Kusama. It is an adaptation of the animated television series created by Peter Chung. In 2011, a mortal virus eliminated 99 % of population on the Earth. Goodchild, a scientist, managed to create a vaccine and 400 years later, the survivors inhabit Bregna, a [...]
http://spacefiction.wordpress.com/2012/07/07/aeon-flux/
La Grande Vadrouille (literally « The Great Stroll »; originally released in the United States as Don’t Look Now… We’re Being Shot At!) is a 1966 Franco-British comedy film about how the crew of a Royal Air Force bomber shot down over Paris must then make their way through German-occupied France with the main help of two [...]
http://spacefiction.wordpress.com/2012/07/02/la-grande-vadrouille-gerard-oury/
Atanarjuat, the legend of fast runner is the first of a series of three Inuit films, called the trilogy « The fast runner« : Atarnajuat (2000), The journals of Knud Rasmussen (2006), Before Tomorrow (2009). This film evokes space and other aspects of Inuit culture through one of its legends. Atanarjuat is Canada’s first feature-length fiction film [...]
http://spacefiction.wordpress.com/2012/06/24/atanarjuat-the-legend-of-the-fast-runner-a-vision-of-inuit-civilizations-infinite-spaces-atanarjuat-la-legende-de-lhomme-rapide-une-vision-des-e/
Those who have seen Une chambre en ville the movie by Jacques Demy (1982) probably remember the creepy televisions shop run by the scary Edmond Leroyer (Michel Piccoli), jealous and crazy husband of the beautiful Edith (Dominique Sanda). As part of Le voyage Ă Nantes, artistic event held in Nantes from 15 June to 18 [...]
http://spacefiction.wordpress.com/2012/06/17/des-chambres-en-ville-agnes-varda/
The Seven Year Itch is an American comedy released in 1955 that was adapted by Billy Wilder from a play by George Axelrod. Despite the strong intervention of the censor board during the writing the script and the filming, the movie caused a scandal when it was released in American Puritan circles. Billy wilder uses [...]
http://spacefiction.wordpress.com/2012/06/14/the-seven-year-itch-sept-ans-de-reflexion/
In The Ghost Writer (2010), Roman Polanski creates a captivating scene by using a GPS navigation device. For more details, click on Read More. Be careful, if you have not seen the movie yet. I reveal some elements of the story. Roman Polanski crée une scène d’anthologie au moyen d’un GPS dans son film The [...]
http://spacefiction.wordpress.com/2010/03/24/the-ghost-writer-polanski/
Fantastic Mr Fox is a great animated film by Wes Anderson. It incorporates several space machineries, mostly master plans and battle plans. One of them takes the form of an animated map. The most original is certainly the picture painted by Felicity Fox to support the fight of “wild animals” against evil farmers. She uses [...]
http://spacefiction.wordpress.com/2010/02/27/fantastic-mr-fox-wes-anderson/
With Tournée (2010), M. Amalric received the Award for Best Director at Cannes Festival. This road movie tells the story of a team of New Burlesque US strip-tease performers on a tour across western France. The comedians hope to visit the country before to go to Paris, but they are puzzled by the erratic and [...]
http://spacefiction.wordpress.com/2010/07/15/tournee-amalric/
The stylistic innovations that made the success of the TV series 24 are now influencing movies. A very clear example is Greenzone, the movie of Paul Greengrass. It is saturated with maps, navigation softwares, satellite images and many other representations of the space of action. Of course Green Zone is based on a true story [...]
http://spacefiction.wordpress.com/2010/05/21/green-zone/
The latest novel by Michel Houellbecq deals not only with art and society, but also with places and their representations. The title “The map and territory” can be interpreted as a synthesis of the artistic journey of the hero, Jed Martin. The international career of this visual artist starts in the 2010s through a series [...]
http://spacefiction.wordpress.com/2010/12/09/la-carte-de-houellebecq-precede-le-territoire-the-map-precede-the-territory/
“The Social Network” . Excerpt of the trailer – Extrait de la bande-annonce How to visualize a virtual network in a movie? It is the question the director David Fincher had to answer with his new film The Social Network, that tells the story of the young and famous Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg. There is [...]
http://spacefiction.wordpress.com/2010/10/19/les-espaces-dans-the-social-network-fincher/
With the release of their new album The Suburbs and the beginning of their new concert tour, the Montreal band Arcade Fire offers an interesting geospatial and interactive experience. By entering a place of your choice on the site, ideally your childhood home address, you generate a custom clip based on images from Google Maps [...]
http://spacefiction.wordpress.com/2010/09/01/we-used-to-wait-arcade-fire/
Times have changed. In Toy Story 3, Woody uses a kind of Pixar Google Maps to know how to go to Andy’s house from Bonnie’s. In both cases, the map does not have a specific role in the fiction. It is simply used to find a location. We can however notice that it is probably the first time a map service appears in an animated movie.
http://spacefiction.wordpress.com/2010/07/28/locating-in-toy-story-se-localiser-dans-toy-story/
Each one of the two parts of the movie Che (dir. Steven Soderbergh 2009) starts with an animated map (at least in the North American version of the film): An animated map of the different Cuban provinces in Part I and an animated map of the different countries of South America in Part II. Both [...]
http://spacefiction.wordpress.com/2009/12/16/che/
There is one map in the Watchmen movie (see also Wikipedia). It appears in the War Room scenes behind President Nixon when the Army staff presents a simulation of the consequences of a Russian response to a US strike. This is an animated world map, first displayed at a medium scale, followed by a zoom [...]
http://spacefiction.wordpress.com/2010/01/23/the-maps-of-the-watchmen-les-cartes-des-gardiens/
Up in the Air, a film by Jason Reitman (2009), is full of various spatial arrangements. The film itself is built as an erratic journey throughout the United States : Detroit, Michigan, Omaha, Nebraska, Las Vegas, Nevada, Florida, Wisconsin, Chicago… It is also a subtle evocation of the spatial dimension of personal, family and work [...]
http://spacefiction.wordpress.com/2010/02/03/up-in-the-air-en-suspens/
In the latest Marc Lawrence’s movie Did You Hear About the Morgans?, with Hugh Grant and Jessica Parker, a killer searches on Google Maps for the name of the city where his targets have hidden. He finds : Ray, Wyoming. The spectator follows the entire search on the screen until the very detailed final map. [...]
http://spacefiction.wordpress.com/2010/01/31/did-you-hear-about-the-morgans-ou-sont-passes-les-morgan-film/
Created in collaboration between Yona Friedman, a theoretician of architecture and Jean-Baptiste Decavèle, a photographer and a videographer, this exhibition transposed the fictitious geography of an island situated in the far north of Canada to the middle of the Lake of Vassivière in Limousin. Visitors were invited to discover the mapping of the imaginary Balkis [...]
http://spacefiction.wordpress.com/2011/01/25/balkis-island-une-cartographie-imaginaire/
Avatar – James Cameron’s film released in 2009 - takes place on the planet Pandora. The human coveted ore located beneath the natives’ village ground. At a briefing, soldiers try to localize their position with an interactive 3D holographic maps. Its handling is rather technical and tricky. The head of the crew fails to navigate [...]
http://spacefiction.wordpress.com/2010/07/04/avatar/
Sherlock Holmes is a 2009 action mystery film based on the character of the same name created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The film was directed by Guy Ritchie and produced by Joel Silver, Lionel Wigram, Susan Downey and Dan Lin. The screenplay by Michael Robert Johnson, Anthony Peckham and Simon Kinberg was developed from [...]
http://spacefiction.wordpress.com/2011/04/22/sherlock-holmes-guy-ritchie/
Google Maps appears in Joseph O’Neill’s novel Netherland. To the best of my knowledge, it is the first time that Google Maps appears in a literary work. If you have an earlier example, please write us a comment. Of course Google Maps doesn’t play a central role in the book. Google Maps appears in two [...]
http://spacefiction.wordpress.com/2009/11/01/google-maps-enters-litteraturegoogle-maps-entre-dans-la-litterature/
In Synecdoche, the first film he directed, Charlie Kaufman offers us a crazy game based on the impossible paradox of the perfect representation of reality. Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman) is a depressive and hypochondriac theater director. He wants to create the absolute play by putting on stage an exact and faithful reproduction of his own life. To meet this requirement, he has to direct himself as a theater director directing himself and he has to hire actors to play actors playing the characters of his life. This results in a spatial impressive machinery.
Dans Synecdoque, son premier film en tant que réalisateur, Charlie Kaufmann nous propose un jeu délirant fondé sur le paradoxe de l’impossible représentation parfaite de la réalité. Caden Cotard, metteur en scène de théâtre dépressif et hypocondriaque joué par Philip Seymour Hoffman, veut créer à partir de sa vie une pièce de théâtre absolue, totale et intégralement fidèle. Pour respecter son exigence, il doit se mettre en scène en train de mettre en scène sa pièce et embaucher des acteurs pour jouer les acteurs jouant les personnages de sa vie. Cela se traduit par un dispositif spatial impressionnant.
http://spacefiction.wordpress.com/2011/07/22/synecdoche-newyork-kaufmann
The Good, the Bad and the Weird (dir. Ji-woon Kim, 2008) is a remake of Sergio Leone’s masterpiece The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly (1966). Beyond the fact that both versions unfold in different locations and at different times (1860s American civil war and 1930s Mandchuria), the presence of maps in both versions leads [...]
http://spacefiction.wordpress.com/2011/03/14/the-good-the-bad-and-the-weird-le-bon-la-brute-et-le-cingle/
Dexter’s GPS device has an important impact in the end of Season 2. Dexter Morgan is a forensics blood splatter analyst for the Miami Police Department and a “nice” serial killer (he kills other killers who escaped the legal system). He maintains a close relationship with Lila West, a young English woman that has psychopath [...]
http://spacefiction.wordpress.com/2010/04/08/dexters-gps-device-le-gps-de-dexter/
National Treasure (released in 2004) and National Treasure: Book of Secrets (released in 2007) are two movies directed by Jon Turteltaub. Both films have the same narrative structure : Benjamin Gates (starring Nicolas Cage) goes to treasure hunt. By solving different clues he finds a treasure map. He succeeds in deciphering it to finally discover the hidden treasure.
Jon Turteltaub réalise en 2004 Benjamin Gates et le trésor des templiers puis en 2007 Benjamin Gates et le livre des secrets. Les deux films sont structurés de la même façon : Benjamin Gates (interprété par Nicolas Cage) se lance à la recherche d’un trésor. Grâce à différents indices il trouvera la carte menant au trésor convoité, il la décryptera pour enfin découvrir ce trésor si longtemps caché.
http://spacefiction.wordpress.com/2010/11/02/benjamin-gates/
Angosto (La noche de los girasoles) is a Spanish-French movie film directed by the Jorge Sánchez-Cabezudo and released in 2006. A cave was discovered in the surroundings of Cerredo in the Spanish Pyrenees. Two cavers come from the city to explore it. Two maps appear furtively in the movie. La Nuit des tournesols (La noche [...]
http://spacefiction.wordpress.com/2010/01/01/la-nuit-des-tournesols-angosto-la-noche-de-los-girasoles/
Le photographe is a graphic novel (3 albums) created by Emmanuel Guibert (script, design and colors), Frédéric Lemercier (colors and layout) and Didier Lefevre (scenario and photographs). It retraces the journey of a Médecin sans frontières team (MSF is an independent humanitarian medical aid organisation). The story takes place between Pakistan and Afghanistan in 1986 [...]
http://spacefiction.wordpress.com/2010/06/01/le-photographe/
In 2006, Pan’s Labyrinth (dir. Guillermo del Toro) is released. The action takes place in Spain, in 1944, during the franquist period. The fascist army chases rebels hidden in the Spanish Maquis. The Captain Vidal (Sergi López), uses a map to organize the hunt. He reads it with a magnifying glass and puts landmarks on [...]
http://spacefiction.wordpress.com/2010/08/15/el-laberinto-del-fauno-pans-labyrinth-le-labyrinthe-de-pan/
We can find a very interesting and spectacular spatial machinery in the Prison Break TV show. In Season 1, Michael Scofield has incorporated elements of his escape plan in a tattoo that covers his upper half. The tattoo has hidden within it the blueprint of the prison and specific references for items and places that [...]
http://spacefiction.wordpress.com/2010/01/17/mapman-lhomme-plan-prison-break/
In animated films, ways of representing space are unlimited. Everything is possible in an animated cartoon. From the beginning of the 20th century, animated movie makers have been inventing new ways of representing space (e.g. The flying house by Winsor McCay, 1921). Le dessin animé est un domaine dans lequel les formes de représentation de [...]
http://spacefiction.wordpress.com/2010/06/25/end-of-the-world/
In 2005, almost 30 years after Dawn of the dead (see this post) second part of his “Dead series”, George Romero directed a fourth movie Land of the dead. No paper maps here … Time has passed and computers and GPS are now available. En 2005, presque 30 ans après avoir réalisé Zombie (voir ce [...]
http://spacefiction.wordpress.com/2010/09/13/escape-from-zombies%e2%80%a6-again-and-again-echapper-aux-zombies%e2%80%a6-encore-et%c2%a0encore/
National Treasure (released in 2004) and National Treasure: Book of Secrets (released in 2007) are two movies directed by Jon Turteltaub. Both films have the same narrative structure : Benjamin Gates (starring Nicolas Cage) goes to treasure hunt. By solving different clues he finds a treasure map. He succeeds in deciphering it to finally discover [...]
http://spacefiction.wordpress.com/2010/11/02/benjamin-gates/
In Meangirls, a 2004 American teen comedy film, we find an interesting example of social mapping. Cady is a new student who does not know anyone yet in North Shore high school. Janis draws for her a map of the cafeteria that presents the various groups of students and where they sit. It is indeed very [...]
http://spacefiction.wordpress.com/2011/04/17/where-do-you-sit-in-the-cafeteria-meangirls/
The film Dogville directed by Lars Von Trier (2003) takes literally place on a map. The action unfolds in a small town in the U.S. The houses are drawn on the ground, some elements are represented by symbols (e.g. some bushes), and the names of the streets are written on the ground. Only few pieces [...]
http://spacefiction.wordpress.com/2010/04/20/dogville-closed-spaceespace-clos/
Released in 2003, Greendale is a concept album by Neil Young & Crazy Horse, which tells the story of a family facing a murder in the small town of Greendale (a fictional California seaside town). The album cover shows a map of the city. Complementary to the album, a website uses the same map to [...]
http://spacefiction.wordpress.com/2010/04/26/greendale-neil-young/
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