In Motion and On Location: Representing Travel Ideals in Film

The connection between travel and cinema is profound. Emerging from an era in which photographic and visual image culture was transforming the epistemologic structures of modem society, cinematic technologies originate from the last decade of the nineteenth century. Although there are competing versions as to the first instance of a cinematic screening event, cited most frequently is the Lumiere brothers' first public screen­ing of a short film, L'Arrivee d 'un train en gare de La Ciotat (Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station) in 1895. Many of the early short films de­veloped and projected in Europe and America were documentaries that emphasised movement and novelty. These early images and the technol­ogy used to produce them represented both a realism and an exoticism that were also characteristic of the burgeoning industry of mass travel.