''No Maps for These Territories'' is an independent
documentary film
A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional film, motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". Bill Nichols (film critic), Bil ...
made by
Mark Neale
Mark Neale is a British documentarian and film director based in Los Angeles, California. His best-known work is the 1999 documentary ''No Maps for These Territories'', which profiled cyberpunk author William Gibson. Prior to ''No Maps'', Neale had ...
focusing on the speculative fiction author
William Gibson
William Ford Gibson (born March 17, 1948) is an American-Canadian speculative fiction writer and essayist widely credited with pioneering the science fiction subgenre known as ''cyberpunk''. Beginning his writing career in the late 1970s, his ...
.
[ It features appearances by ]Jack Womack
Jack Womack (born January 8, 1956) is an American author of fiction and speculative fiction.
Womack was born in Lexington, Kentucky, and now lives in New York City with his wife and daughter. "Yeah, I was in Kentucky. Lived there till I was 21 ...
, Bruce Sterling
Michael Bruce Sterling (born April 14, 1954) is an American science fiction author known for his novels and short fiction and editorship of the ''Mirrorshades'' anthology. In particular, he is linked to the cyberpunk subgenre.
Sterling's first ...
, Bono
Paul David Hewson (born 10 May 1960), known by his stage name Bono (), is an Irish singer-songwriter, activist, and philanthropist. He is the lead vocalist and primary lyricist of the rock band U2.
Born and raised in Dublin, he attended M ...
, and The Edge
David Howell Evans (born 8 August 1961), better known as the Edge or simply Edge,McCormick (2006), pp. 21, 23–24 is an English-born Irish musician, singer, and songwriter. He is best known as the lead guitarist, keyboardist, and backing voca ...
and was released by Docurama
Docurama is an over-the-top video streaming service in May 2014 by US entertainment company Cineverse that serves documentary films to proprietary software
Proprietary software is software that is deemed within the free and open-source softw ...
. The film had its world premiere at the Vancouver International Film Festival
The Vancouver International Film Festival (VIFF) is an annual film festival held in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, for two weeks in late September and early October.
The festival is operated by the Greater Vancouver International Film Fest ...
in October 2000.
Background and premise
At the time of the project's conception, Gibson – an American exile in Vancouver, Canada – was seen as a reclusive figure, who thought the didactic
Didacticism is a philosophy that emphasizes instructional and informative qualities in literature, art, and design. In art, design, architecture, and landscape, didacticism is an emerging conceptual approach that is driven by the urgent need to ...
inclination in novelists anathema and was not prone to divulging much in the way of personal information in interviews and retrospectives.[ The documentary was intended to assuage the dearth of knowledge of Gibson's perspectives on self, career and culture and to uncover the hitherto obscured depths of the writer.][
The film was shot on location in the United States, Canada, Ireland, and the United Kingdom.][
]
Content
During the documentary Gibson muses both on his past and the circumstances that led him to write what he wrote, as well as our present which, accordingly, is starting to resemble in many particulars the futures he has variously penned. He speculates on topics as wide-ranging as post-human society and mechanics, nanotechnology
Nanotechnology, also shortened to nanotech, is the use of matter on an atomic, molecular, and supramolecular scale for industrial purposes. The earliest, widespread description of nanotechnology referred to the particular technological goal o ...
, drugs and drug culture, the effect of ''Neuromancer'' on his fans and his later writing career, and the normalisation of technology.[ The documentary is extremely free-flowing and also highly personal, in that it allows one to gain a close understanding of both the thought processes and internal psychological triggers of William Gibson. He is occasionally prompted by an unseen driver figure, female in voice, and sometimes communicates with outside figures (specifically, Jack Womack and Bono, who was also being filmed at the time, the final product being superimposed on an electronic ]billboard
A billboard (also called a hoarding in the UK and many other parts of the world) is a large outdoor advertising structure (a billing board), typically found in high-traffic areas such as alongside busy roads. Billboards present large advertise ...
).
In the film, while recounting his childhood near Conway, South Carolina
Conway is a city in Horry County, South Carolina, United States. The population was 24,849 at the 2020 census, up from 17,103 in 2010 census. It is the county seat of Horry County and is part of the Myrtle Beach metropolitan area. It is the home ...
, Gibson reflects on his early works, saying:
Cinematography
The entire documentary revolves around footage taken from the car, either from front-facing cameras (presumably mounted near the dashboard or on the actual chassis) or from internally mounted ones, fitted to center on Gibson, who sits in the back seat of the limousine. Only on one occasion does he leave the car, to wander up and down a favourite beach, and here he is also filmed, providing one of the documentary's iconic images, that of a weathered monochromatic
A monochrome or monochromatic image, object or color scheme, palette is composed of one color (or lightness, values of one color). Images using only Tint, shade and tone, shades of grey are called grayscale (typically digital) or Black and wh ...
Gibson in a long black coat being buffeted by the strong coastal breeze. Neale consistently plays with the recorded footage, reversing sections of the film while keeping others playing or stopping them entirely, fading between similar but fundamentally different pieces of footage, and even at one point combining footage of Gibson with the screen of an antique television as he describes the advent of television in the Southern United States.
In '' The End of Celluloid'' (2004), historian of digital art Matt Hanson
Matt Hanson (born 17 September 1971) is an author, film producer, and film director, specializing in digital art. He has created a series of projects which investigate cinema's possible futures, including '' A Swarm of Angels'', '' onedotzero'' ...
argues that ''No Maps'' was a film that could not have been made before the advent of digital technology.[
]
Release and reception
''No Maps'' was released by Docurama
Docurama is an over-the-top video streaming service in May 2014 by US entertainment company Cineverse that serves documentary films to proprietary software
Proprietary software is software that is deemed within the free and open-source softw ...
and had its world premiere at the Vancouver International Film Festival
The Vancouver International Film Festival (VIFF) is an annual film festival held in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, for two weeks in late September and early October.
The festival is operated by the Greater Vancouver International Film Fest ...
in October 2000 with the United States premiere at the Slamdance Film Festival
The Slamdance Film Festival is an annual film festival focused on emerging artists. The annual week-long festival takes place in Park City, Utah, in late January and is the main event organized by the year-round Slamdance organization, which als ...
in January 2001.[ The documentary subsequently hit the independent film festival circuit, with screenings at ]South by Southwest
South by Southwest, abbreviated as SXSW and colloquially referred to as South By, is an annual conglomeration of parallel film, interactive media, and music festivals and Convention (meeting), conferences organized jointly that take place in m ...
in Austin, Texas (March 2001), Grauman's Egyptian Theatre
Grauman's Egyptian Theatre is a historic movie theater
A movie theater (American English), cinema (British English), or cinema hall ( Indian English), also known as a movie house, picture house, the movies, the pictures, picture theater ...
in Los Angeles (March 2001); onedotzero
onedotzero is a contemporary digital arts organisation based in London that aims to promote new work in moving image and motion arts. The organisation conducts public events, artist and content development, publishing projects, education, produc ...
at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London (May 2001), the Carlton Arts Festival in São Paulo (June 2001), the Oldenburg International Film Festival
The Oldenburg International Film Festival has covered the international movie scene in all aspects since 1994. It is situated in Oldenburg, Germany. Its open-minded approach leads to a mixture of movie premieres and original independent productio ...
in Germany (September 2001), and at onedotzero Japan (November 2001).[
The film critics of the '']New Times LA
''New Times LA'' is a now-defunct alternative weekly newspaper that was published in Los Angeles, California by New Times Media from 1996 to 2002.
History
It was formed by the purchase and merger of the '' Los Angeles View''/'' Los Angeles Villag ...
'' and the ''Riverfront Times
The ''Riverfront Times'' (''RFT'') is a free progressive weekly newspaper in St. Louis, in the U.S. state of Missouri, that consists of local politics, music, arts, and dining news in the print edition, and daily updates to blogs and photo galler ...
'' of St. Louis, Missouri recognised the film as the best documentary of 2001, with the latter commenting "Gibson's writing is often tedious, but the man proves articulate and compelling, especially when seated in the back of a car that appears to be driving across different dimensions."[ Postcyberpunk novelist ]Cory Doctorow
Cory Efram Doctorow (; born July 17, 1971) is a Canadian-British blogger, journalist, and science fiction author who served as co-editor of the blog ''Boing Boing''. He is an activist in favour of liberalising copyright laws and a proponent of ...
, reviewing the film for ''Wired'' magazine, concluded "Nostalgic without being maudlin, ''No Maps for These Territories'' is a one-man show with revelations every minute".[ Reviewer Merle Bertrand of '']Film Threat
''Film Threat'' is an online film review publication, and earlier, a national magazine that focused primarily on independent film, although it also reviewed videos and DVDs of mainstream films, as well as Hollywood movies in theaters. It first ...
'' was unenthused by the premise of the film, but found that "its rapid-fire editing, mystically brooding yet ironic atmosphere, and eerie soundtrack keeps it from ever becoming dull" despite its repetitive treatment of the subject matter, and ultimately hailed the documentary as "a brilliant and intelligent viewing experience".[
In the run-up to the release of Gibson's ninth novel '']Spook Country
''Spook Country'' is a 2007 novel by speculative fiction author William Gibson. A political thriller set in contemporary North America, it followed on from the author's previous novel, ''Pattern Recognition'' (2003), and was succeeded in 2010 by ...
'' in summer 2007, publisher Penguin Books
Penguin Books is a British publishing, publishing house. It was co-founded in 1935 by Allen Lane with his brothers Richard and John, as a line of the publishers The Bodley Head, only becoming a separate company the following year.[Second Life
''Second Life'' is an online multimedia platform that allows people to create an avatar for themselves and then interact with other users and user created content within a multi player online virtual world. Developed and owned by the San Fra ...]
.[
]
References
External links
*
*
''No Maps for These Territories''
at Docurama Films
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:No Maps For These Territories
2000 films
Non-fiction Cyberpunk media
William Gibson
British documentary films
Documentary films about technology
Documentary films about writers
2000s English-language films
Films directed by Mark Neale
2000s British films