Cinematic Mapping of Cambridge was funded by the Isaac Newton Trust
DIGIS © 2011-12
All Rights Reserved
BROWSE

In the Browse mode, the 241 archive items are sorted into 7 categories: Expressive Space; City Sinfonietta; Moving Image Essay; Moving Image Dissertation; Interview; Animation; Documentation, which are sub-divided into thematic groups.

The DIGIS (Digital Studio for Research in Design, Visualisation and Communication), Department of Architecture, was founded in 1998 to stimulate teaching, research and creative practice. DIGIS developed and supported the practice-based MPhil 'Architecture and the Moving Image' 1998 - 2005, which was assimilated in 2006 into a new interdisciplinary MPhil in 'Screen Media & Cultures' based in MML. In 2006, DIGIS moved into the Martin Centre for Architectural research, in Scroope Terrace, Department of Architecture.

The archive collection consists of newsreels, interviews, documentaries on behalf of Colleges and Departments, short movies of museums and colleges, several departmental buildings, libraries and gardens, as well as MPhil and PhD's movie-essays. In parallel to the productions side, DIGIS (formerly CUMIS) supported MPhil and PhD programmes as the moving image was at the heart of our practice-based research environment. As part of the MPhil course, every students were required to do 'movie-essays' and 'movie-dissertations', most of them portraying, interpreting and expressing the buildings and places of the University, Colleges and the city. This searchable web archive consists of 241 movies carefully selected from our collection of 900 tapes.

Penz, François and Lu, Andong (2011). Eds. Urban Cinematics – Understanding Urban Phenomena through the Moving Image. Intellect Books, 2011.

Thomas, Maureen and Penz, François (2003). Eds. Architectures of Illusions ­– from motion pictures to navigable interactive environments. Bristol: Intellect Books, 2003.

Penz, François and Thomas, Maureen (1997). Eds. Cinema and Architecture: Melies, Mallet-Stevens, Multimedia. BFI Publishing, 1997.

Contact: François Penz, 1-5 Scroope Terrace, Cambridge CB2 1PX, E-mail: fp12@cam.ac.uk
Research & Website Design: Andong Lu

In the Historical timeline, you may search selected movies by building dates along the historical timeline.

HISTORICAL TIMELINE

In the Map mode, you may search selected movies by their locations on the city map as well as on the historic maps.

MAP

In the Tour mode, you may view selected movies via guided tours. Featured tours include: Modernism Tour, Ghost Tour, Garden Tour, World City Tour, and Music Tour.

TOUR
This website contains the video archive of the Digital Studio (DIGIS) for Research in Design, Visualisation and Communication, Martin Centre, Department of Architecture, University of Cambridge. It contains both research and practice-based movies about the University of Cambridge produced between 1998 and 2008. DIGIS, formerly CUMIS (Cambridge University Moving Image Studio), produced around 900 short digital movies documenting the various aspects of the life of the University. We aim here to make accessible this unique resource through a process of ‘cinematic mapping’, which consists in geo-referencing the movies on a map of Cambridge, at the place where they were filmed. This ‘movie centric’ map of Cambridge is a novel way of exploring the city and now made accessible to all through this website.