One cannot imagine film without landscapes. The scenery is as variegated as the potential and functions of these topographies are comprehensive and diverse: Landscapes in films tell stories, express moods, can play the lead, become psychic landscapes or places of longing. They are symbolic foils, islands of stasis within the frequently breakneck flow of the plot. Landscapes are "the freest element of film, the least burdened with servile, narrative tasks, and the most flexible in conveying moods, emotional states, and spiritual experiences" (Sergei Eisenstein). Since the beginning of cinematography, film has made prolific use of this mutable vehicle for conveying ideas: Early screen images of both exotic foreign locations and the native countryside quickly merged into genre films with an intensive use of landscapes. And yet even outside of this genre, a broad panorama of landscapes has opened up in the areas of documentary, fiction, and experimental filmmaking which we shall examine in a series of 13 films in April.
