Promised Lands: Cinema, Geography, Modernism - Paperback

by Sam Rohdie (Author)

An attempt to locate cinema alongside philosophy, painting, geography and travel in terms of a history of modernism. The book focuses on a collection of geographical and ethnographic films and photographs amassed by banker Albert Kahn, in the 1900s - arguably an instance of French modernism.

Back Jacket

An attempt to locate cinema - from the earliest experiments, via the work of Fellini, Welles and Hitchcock, to contemporary European art cinema - alongside philosophy, painting, geography and travel in terms of a history of modernism. The book focuses on a collection of geographical and ethnographic films and photographs amassed by French banker, Albert Kahn, in the 1900s - "The Archives of the Planet." The author argues that the collection is an astonishing instance of French modernism, comparable to the philosophical work of Henri Bergson. It aims to redefine modernism as a shifting geography of artforms, desires and practices of understanding.

Author Biography

Sam Rohdie is Professor of Film Studies at Queen's University Belfast. Editor of Screen in the 1970s he is the author of books on Pasolini and Antonioni as well as a study of Rocco and His Brothers in the BFI Film Classics series. He is currently working on a Fellini lexicon.