BETWEEN GOBI AND HIMALAYA: AN INSTRUCTIONAL FILM ABOUT THE
CARTOGRAPHIC OEVRE OF SVEN HEDIN
M.F. Buchroithner
Dresden University of Technology, Institute for Cartography,
Dresden, Germany
manfred.buchroithner@tu-dresden.de
For many
years Central Asia represents a research focus of the Institute for Cartography
(IfC) of the Dresden University of Technology. The question regarding the
reliability of ancient maps of this vast and remote region led to the
production of an instructional film about the cartographic Oevre of the Swedish
scholar, explorer and adventurer Sven Hedin. Hedin was the first European to
advanced into the interior of the Taklamakan Desert and Tibet. Besides general
geographical, cultural and ethnological findings, his four expeditions carried
out some 100 years ago did not only resulted in valuable cartographic material.
His mappings were the accurate cartographic sources of inner Asia until the
advent of spaceborne imagery. TU Dresden's IfC produced this 35-minutes film in
cooperation with the Audividual Media Center and the Centre for Information Technology
Services and High Performance Computing of the TU Dresden.