Dream Palaces is an interactive web map that documents over 1,400 Black cinema sites across Africa and the diaspora. The project is built from digitized newspaper archives and other historical sources that document cinema culture. Through systematic searching and review, it identifies theaters and stories connected to Black communities, tracing how these spaces functioned as sites of gathering, expression, and memory.
The landing map uses the Spilhaus projection to support a different way of seeing the world. Instead of centering land and nation-states, it rearranges continents and connects oceans into a continuous body of water. While all map projections involve distortion, this one makes those distortions visible and purposeful, disrupting the dominance of standard world maps such as Web Mercator. By reshaping spatial relationships, this map design choice encourages viewers to reconsider what counts as a “center,” a “boundary,” or a meaningful spatial connection.
This map currently presents data from 21 countries spanning Africa, the Americas, and Europe; Theaters appear as flickering points on the map. Clicking on a country allows you to explore more detailed, location-specific information through a familiar Web Mercator view. The dataset is continuously being expanded and refined as new archival materials, historical records, and community contributions are discovered and incorporated. The mapping team warmly welcomes ideas, suggestions, and feedback to help improve both the data and the user experience.
Pan around to explore then click on a cinema to view details.
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Click any point in the map to investigate dream palace.