ABSTRACT
Cinema’s ability to record and catalogue anything and everything is the focus of this chapter. Adopting Kracauer’s reflections on photography and cinema’s rapport with ‘things’ as a methodological guide, the chapter first explores around-the-world stereocard boxes as well as the early-cinema catalogues of UK-based entrepreneur Charles Urban. The second section turns to the ‘world symphony’ genre, looking specifically at Vertov’s A Sixth Part of the World (1926) and Ruttmann’s Melody of the World (1929). The last section turns to contemporary web-based and -sourced projects dealing with the avalanche of images flooding the Internet, including Perry Bard’s The Global Remake: The Man with a Movie Camera (2007–2014), Natalie Bookchin’s Mass Ornament (2009), the YouTube documentary Life in a Day (2011) and the parodic global symphony In Praise of Nothing (2017).
