ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that the cliched representations of landscape often found in the cinema, illustrated by considering the reasons why science-fiction film-makers routinely employ a powerful but restricted set of urban landscapes to anchor the narratives of their movies. The chapter considers the cultural meaning that landscapes acquire as a result of their contact with film production, noting how such contacts challenge ideas that popular culture is necessarily associated with ordinariness. The international film tourism industry in connection with Malta, that has grown up around this activity is a phenomenon with ample precedents in the field of cultural tourism. There is remarkable consistency in the landscapes depicted when film-makers frame their narratives to negotiate the characteristic polarities of the genre, such as between good/evil, light/dark, sanitised/contaminated, order/chaos, utopian/dystopian and urban/rural. The transformation of Anchor Bay provides insight into the complex relationship between landscape and film.
