In order explore what types of films were accessible to audiences in different neighbourhoods of Rome, we have attempted to address the following questions:
Were Italian, American and other foreign films available to audiences in the same way in different geographical areas of the city? Did a film nationality have an impact on the way films travelled across cinema runs and on the length of their showing in certain cinema theatres? Were foreign films other than American only screened in certain cinema runs?
Mapping films’ attributes (nationality) and cinemas’ attributes (total duration of showings, and cinema run) against the geographical space of Rome sheds light on underlying dynamics in place between locations, films and cinema theatres programming strategies.
We have used Palladio, CartoDB and AtlasCine to answer these questions.
1.Palladio
In the static maps created using Palladio, we looked at how the most successful films that were exhibited in first run Roman cinemas in 1953 and we followed their journey in second and third run cinemas.
2. Carto
In the maps created using Carto, we have visualised the same journey from first to second and third run cinemas in both a static and a dynamic way. This allows us to picture not just the geography of the film distribution, but also for how long films remained in certain cinemas.
3.AtlasCine
In the last section of the maps, dynamic geo-visualizations using AtlasCine shows a sample of three films (one American, one Italian, and one of another nationality) which were representative for their category in terms of film distribution in Roman cinemas in that year. The maps will open in a new browser tab. Click on the bottom left symbol to play the animation.
