Film Geographies is an international platform, archive, and curatorial network exploring the relationship between film and place.
Founded by Jessica Jacobs in 2016, in collaboration with Joseph Palis, it brings together over 1,500 researchers, filmmakers, and practitioners, and has curated a growing collection of more than 300 films. Through screenings, collaborations, and sustained engagement with major geography conferences, Film Geographies has established itself as a key site for the development of film–geography as a field of practice and inquiry.
The platform operates across academic and cultural contexts, supporting new forms of research, curation, and public engagement. It enables connections between filmmakers and geographers, foregrounds place-based storytelling, and creates spaces where film functions as both method and medium.
Film Geographies is now entering its next phase, expanding its international curatorial network and developing the archive as a shared resource. Registering is free to watch any films. Contact us if you are interested in hosting a screenings, submitting a film, or building new strands of activity.
What makes a film geographical?
For us a geographical film is a film that explores people’s relationship to their environment, a film that is place-based, and where that ‘place’, often dismissed as ‘background’ in other films, is treated like a character in its own right with agency and voice. (Jacobs and Palis, 2020).
Why make a geographical film?
Film is a different kind of knowledge creation and production process. Using filmmaking in an academic context gives us the potential to produce a different way of knowing and understanding our world. It’s exciting to think through the way that film creates different fields of representation. Filmmaking, especially when combined with other approaches allows academic research to engage a wider audience.