Annabelle Olson
AHIS499
05/18/2022

The Globalizing and Imperial Impacts “transport films.”

      Last night's readings focused on “transport films.” With the advent of steamships and the completion of major canals, travel in the 19th century was quicker and easier than ever before, renewing European ambitions of circumnavigation. The idea was not only to travel the world but to do so in the shortest time possible. Cameramen sought to parade the world in front of a film camera and conquer this feat before their competitors. 19th-century filmmakers now had the ability to transport vision and audiences had the sensation of vision transported.
    With this new power came an interesting dynamic between the cameraman, the subject, and the audience. Schwartz states that “circumnavigating the world had become a greater imperial ambition than the act of colonial administration” in this new age. To dissect the power dynamic and global impact of transport films it is interesting to think about Michael Allan’s distinction between preservation and restoration. He described artistic preservation as the effort to maintain a site in all of its contradictions, and restoration as bringing the site itself back in time to its moment of functional novelty. To illustrate this distinction he looks at the Lumneir film Les Pyramides (vue générale) and David Roberts' illustration of the Sphinx for a book of historical scriptures. The film captured the pyramids in 1897 before archaeologists dug up the bottom temple of the Sphinx, giving the structure a totally different modern form. The film preserved the Sphinx in 1897 in a 50-second duration documenting a view specific to that place and time. Roberts’ illustrations, on the other hand, were less concerned with realism, and more so with visually describing the mythological grandeur of the site as written in scripture. He looked at the sites through a specific frame, creating an image to narrate and restore the stories and scripture that made them meaningful.
    The imperial impact of 19th-century transport films has to do with the artistic choice of preservation or restoration in each specific work. What Schwartz urges readers to consider is that cinema was not yet a great art form at this time, but instead a visual entertainment within, and often overshadowed by, a collection of other visual spectacles. Thus it is important to analyze the imperial or globalizing effect of the collection of visual worldly parades. Transport films did parade the world in front of a camera and transport that image to a western audience, but it did not necessarily result in the conquest of that time and space. Schwartz describes the subject of many transport films as “looking back” at the out of place camera and operator. This resulted in the subject's gaze ultimately meeting the audience's gaze resulting in a moment of understanding of their shared humanity. It is possible that some transport films contributed to globalization through audiences' recognition of universal humanity.
    Schwartz writes “Early Transport films conquered space by keeping time.” European cameramen held the power of the camera's gaze; they had the ability to choose what projected images western audiences would associate with foreign peoples and places. When cameramen utilized their camera for the act of preservation, capturing a moment in time and space for a specific duration, as done in Les Pyramides, I believe a globalizing effect often occurred. This allowed for viewers’ visions to be transported to another place and realize the familiar experience of occupying a place for a duration of time. Of course, duration can also collapse cultures into a singular momentary spectacle that is reductive. But, there is something about preservation and documentation that brings to life the reality of the here and now. Restoration, on the other hand, visually brings to life narratives of a place and peoples that from a 19th-century western man can produce stereotypical, destructive, and colonial images.