The French New Wave Archive Project

1. The French New Wave Archive Project - Bhargavi Narayanan

2. What is it? • The French New Wave Archive project seeks to create an online archive of the cinema of the French New Wave as a narrative of city spaces they are set in. • The archive will map the city spaces as rendered in the films and create a comprehensive documentation that visualizes the ‘moment’ of the city spaces in the late 1950s and 1960s. • Apart from the images/clips from the films, the archive will also contain photographs, documents and other relevant information that contribute to understanding the politics of the spaces. • The archive will be as much an archive of spaces in the cinema, as it is of the genre. It will be a dual map of the film spaces and ‘real’ spaces and through the juxtaposition of both, will paint a portrait of the city at a particular time frame.

3. Why is it important? • Non-traditional archive project, based on a spatial approach to film studies that reveals the little explored connections between cinema and the architectonics of space. • It provides a different lens to approach/understand city spaces. • It relies heavily on tools offered by digital technology to visualize and make sense of humanistic data. • Database that can foster interesting interdisciplinary research engagements.

4. Who is it relevant for? • Film theorists and enthusiasts • Architects interested in architecture of city spaces • Historians (the ‘moment’ of a city) • Geographers ( innovative mapping techniques) • Digital Humanists • Anyone interested in or nostalgic about cities or city spaces

5. How is it going to be? • The city space will be represented diagrammatically on a (real) map. • The movement of the characters will be mapped on this, with allowances for ambiguities and fictional spaces. • The mise-en-scene of the films will be stitched together to simulate the journey/path of the characters and the city they experience. Archival and contemporary photographs and other relevant documents about the city space will also be used. • Goal: A layered, multi-sectional map that can be ‘toured’ by users. • Option to coalesce the layers into one another and tour film, fictional and real city spaces at the same time. • Or to tour the city as one protagonist only or one type of space only.

6. Cleo from 5 to 7 14th arrondissement, Paris.

7. Vivre Sa vie 5th arrondissement, Paris.

8. Visualizing the spaces: • http://parismoviewalks.co.uk/ • http://www.thecinetourist.net/les-400-coups-paris-locations.html • http://projectcinemacity.com/ • http://www.wbstudiotour.co.uk/en/tour/tour

9. The challenges: • How to map the internal journey of the characters? (problem of affect) • What about films like Hiroshima Mon Amor (dir. Alain Resnais, 1959) that do not have such explicit physical journeys but are films about city spaces in crisis? • How do we map politics of memory and desire? • play with the topography of the diagrammatic map. • Develop a fractal map of multiple city spaces to highlight their similarities and differences (innovative map that challenges linearity of time and space). SOLUTION: collaborate from the start with software developers and geographers to develop a tool that can handle ambiguous, multi-layered maps.

10. Work Plan and Implementation • The project will be implemented over a three year timeline. • First year – Collecting relevant resources for each film (data mining, traveling to the cities, interview with scholars/critics/film buffs who are knowledgeable about the shooting locations). • Second year – Compilation and review of data, analysis of tools, designing suitable tools/aids for visualization. • Third year – Actual visualization and getting the archive online.

11. Budget • Team of 8 – 2 software developers, 2 film theorists, 1 geographer, 1 artist, 1 architect, 1 historian. • No of work hours per day – 8x5= 40 hours @ $50 per hour. = $ 2000x12x3 = 72,000 • Web space and maintenance - = $ 5,000 x 3 = 15,000 • Software/equipment (for the team) = $ 2,000 x 8 = 16, 000 • Travel to city spaces – = $ 2,000 x 8 x 3 = 48,000 • Other over head costs - = $ 4, 000 • Total - $1,55,000

12. Evaluation • Project evaluations at the middle of the second year and the end of third year. • Evaluation in the middle of second year – In-house evaluation. • In-house evaluation: Research associates and members of the project evaluate each others work. Will happen during the data compilation, processing and development of tools/software period. • Evaluation at the end of three years – Panel of experts • Panel will consist of experts from disciplines of History, Film and Media studies, Sociology, Digital Humanities and Geography. • Since the archive will be an online initiative, comments/feedback from users will be solicited and considered. This will be an ongoing process.

13. Dissemination: • Archive will be made available online for the general public. • Any research/publication using the archive will be linked/added to the archive. • Based on the evaluation and learning from the three years, the archive can expand to incorporate other cinema and city spaces in those. • It can work towards being an archive of postmodern city spaces across different cultural backgrounds.