Cirrus@Austlit

'Initially, movies and maps might appear to have little in common: films move while maps tend to be static; films belong to the realms of art and popular culture while maps relate to the world of science. Upon closer examination, however, they share much common ground. They both communicate visually to delineate and describe the space in which we live. They both refer their audiences and readers to political, historical and social contexts of their time. Maps, of course, are overtly symbolic in a way that film can obscure by a naturalistic portrayal of time and place but however realistic and accurate they aspire to be, each can only ever represent the reality of the world we live in. Importantly, both films and maps tell stories. Sometimes tall stories: Hic sunt dracones ('Here be dragons') claimed the legend on the early sixteenth-century Lenox Globe to denote unexplored territory. And unknown territory is precisely where many filmmakers aim to take their audiences. Enabling us to fix time and space for a short moment, films and maps both tell stories about the known world to reveal a new world. They are two ways humans have devised to chart the unknown territory of our imagination.' (Introduction)