PlaCe/Land2 lecture

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Gabriel SolomonsPlaCe/Land2 PresentationThursday, November 24th

World Film Location Book Series / Material copyright ©2011 Intellect Ltd.

Cinema: Shapingthe View of Our Cities


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‘For a child, landscapes and cityscapes evoke emotions, associations, ideas and stories. We tend to forget this when we grow older.’Wim Wenders

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Superman (1978)Metropolis/New York

The Red Balloon (1956)Paris

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Metropolis (1927)The ‘Utopian’ Ideal


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Inspiration: The Big Picture MagazineA visually-focussed film magazine that goes beyond the borders of the screen to reveal cinema’s unique power to entertain, inspire and connect to every one of us.

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On Location FeatureSpotlight on a handful of films set in a chosen city for each issue. How does time or circumstance change a location – its significance to the film/actors/etc. Location as ‘character’ and location as cultural signifier.

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Gabriel SolomonsMA PresentationThursday, November 17th

The Big PictureIssue 07March/April 2010

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The Big PictureIssue 08May/June 2010


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World Film Locations SeriesThe World Film Locations series explores and reveals the relationship between the city and cinema.

The city continues to play a central role in a multitude of films, helping us to frame our understanding of place and of the world around us. Whether as elaborate directorial loveletters or as time specific cultural settings, the city acts as a vital character in helping to tell a story.


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Questions:➝ How is cinema helping to shape our

view of the city?➝ What is the role of the city in film?➝ How can we engage with and

better understand different cultures through the medium of film?

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‘Film is a city art. It has come into existence and it has blossomed together with the great cities of the world since the end of the nineteenth century.’Wim Wenders

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‘The spectacle of the cinema both drew on and contributed to the increased pace of modern city life...’David B Clarke (The Cinematic City)

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Skyscrapers of New York (1906)Filmed by Fred A Dobson

Workers Leaving the Lumiere Factory (1895)City residents watching themselves

People watching themselves

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The Keystone Cops (1916)

The Immigrant (1917)

Crime: An urban phenomena Immigration: Lost in the ‘big city’

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‘...Think of Florence, Paris, London, New York. Nobody visiting them for the first time is a stranger, because they’ve already visited them in paintings, novels, history books and films.’Spoken by the character of ‘Thaw’ in Alasdair Gray’s novel Lanark (1981)


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‘Movies aren’t about places, they’re about stories. If we notice the location we’re not really watching the movie. It’s what’s up front that counts.’Thom Andersen

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Many movie landmarks exercise an odd, spectral power when encountered in real life; stubborn traces of the film still lingering behind the everyday.

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Rebel Without A Cause (1955)Griffith Park Observatory, Los Angeles

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The Third Man (1949)Prater amusement park in Leopoldstadt, Vienna

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Do the Right Thing (1989)Stuyvesant Avenue, Brooklyn, New York

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Man on Wire (2008)Ground Zero, Lower Manhattan, NY

Re-imagining location through memory

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‘I’m not sure why it is we seek out that feeling; an impulse somewhere between mere sightseeing and something far deeper; the desire for a single tiny moment in which the boundaries between the film, our memory of the film, and quotidian reality blur into one another and collapse.’Danny Leigh (Film critic)

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Vertigo (1958)Photo Caveh Zahedi

Requiem for a Dream (2000)Photo Peter Dirkx

Robbery (1967)Photo ‘Roll the Dice’ (Flickr)

Film location tours


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‘all cities within film, as an artificial representation of the city, are fantastic and symbolic. However, it is within the fantasy genre film where the city as an ideologicalconcept is most richly evident.’Anna Claydon (CityScope: The Cinema and the City)

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Aftermath of the Los Angeles riots (1990)(Photo: Ted Sequoia)

Escape from LA (1996)

Socio-Political reference

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Falling Down (1993)Deterioration of society, mistrust, housing crisis, policing corruption

They Live (1988)Consumerism, Reagan era policy, pro-capitalism / anti-liberal

Socio-Political reference

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Taxi Driver (1976)The city as oppressive and isolating

Manhattan (1979)The ‘idealised’ and romantisized city

Alternate views

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City of God (2002)Rio De Janeiro

Killer of Sheep (1977)Watts district of Los Angeles

Cities of ‘The Other’

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World Film Locations Launch EventBFI, LondonSeptember 30th, 2011


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Thankyou

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PlaCe/Land2 lecture