Filming the City

Ari Mattes, Mirko Guaralda

Description

Filming the City brings together the work of filmmakers, architects, designers, video artists and media specialists to provide three distinct prisms through which to examine the medium of film in the context of the city. The book presents commentaries on particular films and their social and urban relevance, offering contemporary criticisms of both film and urbanism from conflicting perspectives, and documenting examples of how to actively use the medium of film in the design of our cities, spaces and buildings.  Bringing a diverse set of contributors to the collection, editors Edward M. Clift, Mirko Guaralda and Ari Mattes offer readers a new approach to understanding the complex, multi-layered interaction of urban design and film.

Forward

Graham Cairns

 

Introduction

Edward M. Clift

 

Section One: Film as Spatial Theory

Various

 

Chapter One: Unlawful entry: The imbrication of suburban space and police repression in Jonathan Kaplan's Los Angeles

Ari Mattes

 

Chapter Two: Blockbuster realism: Mapping Gotham in the Dark Knight films

Jarrad Cogle

 

Chapter Three: (Re-) Framing urbanity: Contestation, the moving image and the right to the city

Joern W. Langhorst

 

Chapter Four: Architects of Playtime: Cities as social media in the work of Jaques Tati

Lisa Landrum

 

Chapter Five: Film and the urban nightmare: Pier Vittorio Aureli's cityarchipelagos as urbanities woven from media images in Pete Travis's Dredd and Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises

Maciej Stasiowski

 

Section Two: Film as Spatial Research and Experiment

Various

 

Chapter Six: Hollywood menace: Los Angeles and mid-century modern dens of vice

Gabriel Solomons

 

Chapter Seven: A second life for a second city: Tradition and modernity in Guadalajara in the Summer

Carmen Elisa Gómez-Gomez

 

Chapter Eight: The cinematic image as an architectural conductor: A mediated hint from future architecture

Aysegül Akçay Kavakoglu

 

Chapter Nine: Berlin on film: A mediated and reconstructed city

Graham Cairns

 

Section Three: Film as Spatial Practice

Various

 

Chapter Ten: The grey area between reality and representation: The practices of architects and film-makers

Gemma Barton

 

Chapter Eleven: Electric Signs revisited

Alice Arnold

 

Chapter Twelve: Public and urban humanities: Beyond the ideal city

Luisa Bravo

 

Chapter Thirteen: The mediating city: Towards a mise-en-scéne for interaction online

Benjamin Koslowski

 

Epilogue

Ari Mattes and Mirko Guaralda

Sujets

• Arts visuels
• Architecture
• Cinéma
• Cinéma
• Cinéma
• Cinema
• Buildings
• Media Studies
• Película fotográfica
• Architectural theory
• Index of urban studies articles
• General officer
• Cultural studies
• Building
• Television
• General
• Radio
• Film

Informations

• Publié par: Intellect Books
• Date de parution: 01 juin 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783205561
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

First published in the UK in 2016 by
Intellect, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK
First published in the USA in 2016 by
Intellect, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street,
Chicago, IL 60637, USA
Copyright © 2016 Intellect Ltd
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the
British Library.
Copy-editor: Emma Rhys
Cover designer: Gabriel Solomons
Front cover image: The Limey (Steven Sodebergh, 1999). ARTISAN PICS /
THE KOBAL COLLECTION / MARSHAK, BOB
Production managers: Gabriel Solomons and Jelena Stanovnik
Typesetting: John Teehan
ISBN 978-1-78320-554-7
ePDF ISBN 978-1-78320-555-4
ePub ISBN 978-1-78320-556-1
Produced in conjunction with AMPS (Architecture, Media, Politics, Society)
Printed and bound by Hobbs, UK
Contents

Acknowledgements
Foreword
Graham Cairns
Introduction
Edward M. Clift
Section One: Film as Spatial Theory
Chapter 1 Unlawful Entry: The imbrication of suburban space and police repression in Jonathan Kaplan’s Los Angeles
Ari Mattes
Chapter 2 Blockbuster realism: Mapping Gotham in the Dark Knight films
Jarrad Cogle
Chapter 3 (Re-)Framing urbanity: Contestation, the moving image and the right to the city
Joern W. Langhorst
Chapter 4 Architects of Playtime : Cities as social media in the work of Jacques Tati
Lisa Landrum
Chapter 5 Film and the urban nightmare: Pier Vittorio Aureli’s city-archipelagos as urbanities woven from media images in Pete Travis’s Dredd and Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises
Maciej Stasiowski
Section Two: Film as Spatial Research and Experiment
Chapter 6 Hollywood menace: Los Angeles and mid-century modern dens of vice
Gabriel Solomons
Chapter 7 A second life for a second city: Tradition and modernity in Guadalajara in the Summer
Carmen Elisa Gómez-Gomez
Chapter 8 The cinematic image as an architectural conductor: A mediated hint from future architecture
Aysegül Akçay Kavakoglu
Chapter 9 Berlin on film: A mediated and reconstructed city
Graham Cairns
Section Three: Film as Spatial Practice
Chapter 10 The grey area between reality and representation: The practices of architects and film-makers
Gemma Barton
Chapter 11 Electric Signs revisited
Alice Arnold
Chapter 12 Public life and urban humanities: Beyond the ideal city
Luisa Bravo
Chapter 13 The mediating city: Towards a mise-en-scéne for interaction online
Benjamin Koslowski
Epilogue
Ari Mattes and Mirko Guaralda
Notes on Contributors
Index
Acknowledgements
The editorial team would like to thank the Brooks Institute for their support on this book series.
Foreword
Graham Cairns
T oday, we are perfectly attuned to the ever-present moving imagery of the commercialized urban landscape. We still watch the ‘city symphonies’ of a new generation of film-makers and constantly see ‘the city’ as a site, subject and protagonist in cinematic productions from California to Mumbai. Furthermore, we watch TV shows that highlight their spatial locations as key to their allure and intrigue: New York, Los Angeles, London, Tokyo and a seemingly infinite number of other cities, function as labels to both televisual and cinematic production the world over. In the realms of architectural and urban design, filmic-realistic imagery in the presentations of design proposals is standard practice. The computer generated ‘fly-through’ leads the viewer through the as yet unconstructed proposals of new cities and buildings in ways that echo Sergei Eisenstein’s notion of the cinematic promenade.
The fact that film remains, over a century since its invention, a medium fascinated by the city and its architecture, is evident in the wealth of projects and initiatives that can be found mining this interdisciplinary terrain. This book represents one of them. Beyond being an engagement with film and the city however, this book represents part of a much broader and more complicated tapestry represented by Intellect’s Mediated Cities series. Both this book, and its associated series, find their roots in the ‘Mediated City Research Programme’ coordinated by the research group AMPS (Architecture, Media, Politics, Society) and its associated scholarly journal, Architecture_MPS . The programme brings together theorists, practitioners and academics from various fields to consider the multiple ways in which the city has become a phenomenon that we understand and interact with in a continually ‘mediated’ way.
This approach opens the AMPS ‘Mediated City Research Programme’ to multiple ways of engaging with the urban and is reflected by the three titles it has prepared with Intellect Books to launch this series: Digital Futures and the City of Today: New Technologies and Physical Spaces ; Imaging the City: Art, Creative Practices and Media Speculations ; and of course the present volume, Filming the City: Urban Documents, Design Practices and Social Criticism Through the Lens. Through this filmic prism, this book brings together film-makers, architects, designers, media specialists and video artists. It offers new insights in three areas of mutual engagement: film as a design practice; film criticism; and film as an arena of architectural/urban theory and analysis. It gives commentaries of particular films and their social and urban relevance; it offers historical and contemporary criticisms of both film and urbanism from conflicting perspectives; and it documents examples of how to actively use the medium of film in the design of our cities, spaces and buildings.
Giving a sense of the diversity of interactions between the medium of architectural-urban design and the medium of film, Filming the City: Urban Documents, Design Practices and Social Criticism Through the Lens is ideal for readers from both fields. For those coming from a spatial-design background, the tropes and possibilities of film as a tool and a documentary medium will be explored. For those coming from a film-media background, the multiple possibilities of film as a visual backdrop, narrative theme or conceptual tool will be examined. In this sense, it is typical of the Mediated Cities series and the AMPS ‘Mediated City Research Programme’, in resisting static discipline categorizations and explicitly overlaying and interlacing ideas and working practices. This then, is a book that seeks to engage with a diversity of scholars and readers.
What it engages those readers with is a series of arguments that, in their unique ways, all indicate that the potential of film as a radical visual language, a medium of communication and as a site of architectural and urban investigation, is far from exhausted. Despite the emergence of ever newer visual technologies as we move forward in the twenty-first century, film is still a medium with the potential to move in new directions. Through its now well-established visual and narrative tropes, it still has the potential to continue instigating thought and debate about our built environments and how we experience, design, build or destroy them.
Introduction
Edward M. Clift
C ities, with their social complexities and vibrant multisensory environments, have always inspired artists. Painters, writers and musicians have long described and celebrated urban spaces and have taken inspiration from the narrative of cities to construct their vision of urban societies. Film-makers today are similarly drawn to cinematic visions that seek to depict the changing urbanscapes appearing in different locations throughout the world. This book provides an overview of the privileged relationship that exists between cities and films while successfully problematizing it through extended case studies, theoretical analysis and historical research.
The editors have grouped the chapters into three separate categories based on the nature of their inquiry. Each section seeks to develop a layered set of perspectives emphasizing varying aspects of theory, research or practice in exploring the complex symbiosis that exists between film and the city as a metaphorical device. The first section, ‘Film as Spatial Theory’, deals with a complex set of cinematic and spatial theories through the work of various directors like Jonathan Kaplan, Christopher Nolan and Jacques Tati. Following this is a second section, ‘Film as Spatial Research and Experiment’, which is devoted to film as a type of research into the underlying society that film represents and its spatial affinities. A third and final section, ‘Film as Spatial Practice’, focuses on film-making itself to uncover particular determinants and outcomes it may have within the larger cultural and design conversation.
In the initial chapter, Ari Mattes describes in detail the ways that the pictorial representation of urban and (sub)urban space in Jonathan Kaplan’s Unlawful Entry (1992) foreshadowed, to a large degree, the city that Los Angeles was to become. In his reading, the film uses cinematography and a particular visual style to render its theoretical point regarding the pervasiveness of surveillance in suburban contexts. Los Angeles is portrayed geographically as an artificial dystopia that keeps the disorder of its urban population in check through high degrees of surveillance. Mattes equates the panoptic city that emerges from the narrative with contemporary concerns relating to drone surveillance and remote warfare.
Jarrad Cogle examines the fictionalized representation of ‘Gotham City’ in Christopher Nolan’s Batman films (2005–12) in order to better understand how cities contribute to the mapping of social order within a postmodern global context. The character of Batman , in this interpretation, is a stitching device intended to reintegrate fragmentary perspectives of the city into