Feb 16: Film geographies

Films are an important element of the blog of course, but also integral to the lives of many people.

I came across a site with the specific name: Filmgeographies.

Filmgeographies is an online platform for anyone interested in films about geography and geographers who make films.

It collects films submitted for film competitions organised by the AAG and the RGS-IBG

Filmgeographies started in 2016 via AAG Shorts, a short film screening festival set up by Jessica Jacobs as part of the American Association of Geographers Annual meeting. In 2018 Giovanna Ceno and Matteo Bontempi helped design this website. In November 2018 Jessica Jacobs and Joseph Palis established the first specialty group at the American Association of Geographers’ devoted to film-making and screening.

The site suggests what it is that makes a film geographical.

What makes a film geographical?

For us a geographical film is a film that explores people’s relationship to their environment, a film that is place-based, and where that ‘place’, often dismissed as ‘background’ in other films, is treated like a character in its own right with agency and voice. (Jacobs and Palis, 2020).