Promotional Information

This carefully researched book explores the ways in which non-fiction filmmaking since the 1970s has archived and illuminated dramatic transformations taking place in urban centres worldwide and their repercussions for social relations, class divisions, and negotiations between the regional and national, the urban and suburban. It approaches the documentary mode as a technology whose social and political interventions engage not only the world at large but also bring authorial subjectivity into focus, revealing topographies of the city inextricable from those of the medial self. -- Angelica Fenner, University of Toronto Starting with the French concept of dispositif, or film device, this wonderfully written volume unfolds an intelligent categorization on how non-fiction film has portrayed cityscapes since the early 1970s. Refreshing and generous in its case studies, this book will be a landmark for all students of film and urban studies. -- Josetxo Cerdan, Carlos III de Madrid University

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements Introduction: Place, Images, and Meanings 1. On City and Cinema 2. Documentary Film at the Turn of the Century Part 1. Landscaping 3. Observational Landscaping 4. Psychogeographical Landscaping 5. Autobiographical Landscaping Part 2. Urban Self-Portraits 6. Self-Portrait as Socio-Political Documentary 7. Self-Portrait as Essay Film 8. Self-Portrait as Self-Fiction Part 3. Metafilmic Strategies 9. Inside Hollywood Film Conclusion: Cinema as Agent of Urban Change Appendix Bibliography Index

About the Author

Ivan Villarmea Alvarez is a film critic and researcher who specializes in the representation of the city in film. He coedits the online film journal A Cuarta Parede and is the coeditor of the volume Jugar con la memoria. El cine Portugues en el siglo XXI.