Topo-Cinephilia: On the Pleasures of Place

This essay reflects on the interweaving between love of film and affective investment in spaces and places. I use the term topo-cinephilia to conceptualize a specific kind of spectatorial desire that focuses on cinematic landscapes instead of faces and bodies. I interpret this drive to individuate, visit, and photograph film locations along multiple lines. On the one hand, it represents an attempt to domesticate the uncanny power of images through language, reducing the spectator’s complex fascination with film to an address on a map. At the same time, topo-cinephilia also constitutes a chance for play, allowing the cinephile to bypass the rigid segregation between what is inside and outside of the screen. Drawing on personal experiences, the article investigates topo-cinephilia as a form of pleasure through which the spectator is able to transcend the usual constraints of space and time and inhabit an elsewhere suspended between the cinematic and the everyday.