Screening Transnational Regioscapes

Abstract

The concept of regioscape is introduced, which describes the process of thinking about a region, particularly the Øresund region, in terms of intertwined layers of audiovisual, embodied, geopolitical, and social spaces. Through this concept, this section considers the interrelations between physical elements of territory, the imagined layers, and negotiated spaces that, through contestation and concord, produce the region. The chapter argues for the necessity of conceptualising the Øresund region in terms of regioscapes wherein audiovisual texts register the traces of and critically participate in the processes of regioscaping. This chapter outlines the theoretical approaches from cultural geography and urban studies used in this book. It will demonstrate how the related concepts of imagined communities and the national and transnational within screen studies (Higson 1989; Higbee and Lim 2010) work in conversation with space, place, and identity in cultural and urban geography (Henri Lefebvre’s spatial triad [1991], Michel de Certeau’s conception of spatial practices and tactics [1984]) to inform the conception of regioscape and the subsequent textual analyses.