Magic Mountains – 100 years of Alpine tourism on screen

Comprising around 100 videos and posters from the collections of Ina, the Cinémathèque des Pays de Savoie et de l’Ain and the Musée Dauphinois, the interactive Montagnes magiques fresco, online on the Ina website, is a free knowledge tool for the general public and the world of education. It is part of the Savoirs, perceptions, représentations, et ressources (Knowledge, perceptions, representations and resources ) theme of theTransalpesa research program run by MSH-Alpes, a partner in the project.

The archives are deciphered and contextualized by researchers in the humanities and social sciences from Labex ITTEM, showing not only the factual elements evoked by text and image, but also the way in which television has shaped a narrative about the transformations of mountain territories through tourism. The fresco explores the transformations and innovations that have affected the Alps since the emergence of tourism – first reserved for an elite before becoming a major element of Alpine economies and societies – in all its meanings: sports, resort development, traffic patterns, natural and societal risks, seasonality and multi-activity, reservoirs of natural spaces… Beyond that, Magic Mountains allows us to broaden our reflection on the effects of tourism in lands that are “fragile” from both a physical and economic point of view.

The fresco offers four entry points: chronological, thematic, cartographic or by list (search engine). Each audiovisual document is enriched by other resources (documentary notes, links to other media, etc.), offering several levels of reading.

Thematic tours are also offered, with a guided tour through the site’s contents, as well as teaching scenarios, complete with a teacher’s guide. All texts are written by academics specializing in the subject in question, in a style accessible to the general public.

Part of Ina’s family of interactive frescoes, the interdisciplinary Magic Mountains project is the first of its kind to be co-produced in close partnership with a research organization. It paves the way for the development of other multimedia productions associating Ina and research players.

Researchers associated with the Perce-Neige collective (non-exhaustive list):

Coralie Achin (Lessem), Michaël Attali (VIPS2), Anne Dalmasso (Larhra), Véronique Favre-Bonté (Irège), Dorothée Fournier (Larhra), Emmanuelle George (Lessem), Lauranne Jacob (CRJ/Pacte), Véronique Peyrache-Gadeau (Edytem).