Projecting Places: Cinema’s Crimes Against Geography and the Case of the Vampirization of Italian Locations

The article examines the tension between filmic fiction and geographical referentiality, focusing on how cinema negotiates the relationship between narrative settings and actual locations. The case of *New Moon* (2009), the second film in the *Twilight* saga and an adaptation of a well-known literary work, shows how places initially imagined by the author—also through digital and cartographic tools—were later projected onto real geographies in the cinematic transposition. The adaptation process intensified the gap between fictional setting and filmed location, particularly in relation to the iconic Italian sites where part of the story was set and/or shot, revealing a broader mechanism in cinematic production: a cartographic logic in which the sign precedes and reshapes the referent. This displacement sparked confusion and public controversy, including media debates and institutional protests. At the same time, grassroots responses—such as fan-produced YouTube videos—did not oppose but rather embraced the substitution, illustrating how cinematic geography operates through processes of simulation, mediation, and reinterpretation.