The Sense of Place in Contemporary Cinema

What purpose does place serve in films? When it is not just a background to actions, or indistinguishable from the landscape, or a simple space to walk through, a kind of neutral territory? Such filmmakers as Chantal Akerman, Lisandro Alonso, Pedro Costa, Bruno Dumont, Béla Tarr, Avi Mograbi, Tariq Teguia, Philippe Grandrieux, Danièle Huillet & Jean—Marie Straub and Sharunas Bartas, chose not to focus solely the cinematic narration on the fate of the characters. They showed telluric spatial...