English

This course explores the relationship between the screen and cityscape within the context of a range of films, genres, historical periods, and urban locales in order to show that cinema owes much of its nature to the historical development of urban space and that cinema has shaped our view of the city. Grounding our discussion of the ‘cinematic city’ in film theory and urban theory (Benjamin, Kracauer, Baudrillard, Foucault, Deleuze, Lacan, Lefebvre, and others), we will examine the cinematic forms most significantly related to the city, including early cinema, documentary film, film noir, science fiction, the New Wave, migrant and diasporic cinema, and postmodern cinema. Possible films to be screened: Metropolis, Things to Come, The Man with the Movie Camera, Berlin: Symphony of a Great City, The Maltese Falcon, The Blue Dahlia, Dark Passage, Manhattan, Annie Hall, Street of Crocodiles, Taxi Driver, Boyz N the Hood, Three Colors: Red, Crash, Collateral, Berlin Alexanderplatz, Dekalog, Blade Runner, Dark City, Menace II Society, Safe, SubUrbia, Sin City, Paris je t’aime, and others.