Cinema and the City: Film and Urban Societies in a Global Context (IJURR Studies in Urban and Social Change Book Series 50)

"This book brings together the literature of urban sociology and film studies to explore new analytical and theoretical approaches to the relationship between cinema and the city, and to show how these impact on the realities of life in urban societies"--Publisher's website Cinema and the City provides a vehicle for the expression of new analytical and theoretical approaches to the relationship of film and the city, as these impact upon the lived realities of urban societies. The emphasis is on international diversity and a conceptual organization that attempts to map out different relations of power in the geopolitical system in terms of dominance, subordination, mediation, and resistance, and their articulation in cinema and its political economy.The contributors show how various international cinemas, in their exploration of the fabric of contemporary urban spaces, articulate power in the contemporary world. The case studies presented range from prototypical postmodern cities such as Los Angeles to the colonial and post-colonial. Specific attention is devoted to the US, Canada, Europe, Australia, Africa, and Southeast Asia and the Pacific. This book is concerned with the relationship between the most important cultural form - cinema - and the most important form of social organization - the city - in the twentieth century (and, for the time being at least, the twenty-first century), as this relationship operates and is experienced in society as a lived social reality.