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.