Film, Hot War Traces and Cold War Spaces

This book explores the ways in which film engages with historical events and their impact on present-day landscapes, through a spatial reading of film articulated through the process of charting both creative and coherent cinematic topographies. As the authority of the archive wrestles with the popularity of fictional narratives, this book delves into the debate on the relationship between fiction and documentary in hitherto neglected and surprising contexts. It offers the reader a unique approach to the study of archival footage and documentaries in relation to their fictional counterpart, mainstream films set in the same locations and addressing similar themes, including both live-action films and animations. From images of the places taken during or soon after the facts they represent to the intricacies of retrospective images of the events made years later, the films and footage investigated in this book offer a profound reflection on the ways in which we remember, imagine and experience the past through the complex mediation of film.

Maurizio Cinquegrani is a Senior Lecturer in Film at the University of Kent and Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. He has written widely about film, memory, history and place and his work includes the monographs Of Empire and the City: Remapping Early British Cinema (2014) and Journey to Poland: Documentary Landscapes of the Holocaust (2018).