Thoughts on the 16mm travel film ...

This post is in response to the article describing the typical 16mm travel lecture film, by Jeffery Ruoff, which I'll be talking a bit more about in class tomorrow.

My reaction to this piece broke down into a few parts. First, I was struck by how much these travelogue films mirror our own immediate relationship with filmmaking. Ruoff makes one off hand description on page 232: "They approach it as if they are showing home movies."Later, on page, he brings the idea up again on page 234: "Although the delivery is typically quite polished, [the films contain] features that recall home movie screenings rather than TV programs." In this sense, and given the occasional familial orientation of the filmmaking team responsible for the picture, I wonder if travelogue films represent a halfway point between amateur home movies and the mass entertainment with which we are most commerically familiar. Of course, this notion is troubled by the fact that most travelogue films try to eliminate narrative and focus on facts and tips for travelling. In this regard a partial transcript of one such presentation would have been helpful in establishing the exact tone of speech the presenter utilizes.

Second, as Ruoff suggests, the travelogue film speaks to an older style of filmmaking. Movies are often a way of seeing places one could normally never see. The Sean Connery James Bond blockbusters were a chance to see exotic locales in a time international travel wasn't nearly as accessible as it is now. With the travelogue film, all the superflouous narrative and spectacle are done away with. But the connection remains, nonetheless. However, it must be noted that the upper middle class crowd the films typically attract could probably travel to those destinations fairly easily.

Third, it would seem to me that the United States in particular created a suitable match for the travelogue films. Ruoff describes the travelogue film as a detour film, a car and road film, as opposed to the train and track film of most narrative cinemas. Given the geographic expanse of the US, even when focusing on West and mid-West, it is the thoroughly paved and highwayed nature of the country to would give itself over quite well to the filmmaking strategies of the travelogue director. One book that explores this idea quite well is Cross Country by Robert Sullivan. It's a travelogue exploring the author's own meandering journeys with his family on America's intricate highways, and the qualities of travel he discovers often mirror quite closely the kind of journey that would prove fruitful to a travelogue director as described by Ruoff.