Cities on Celluloid

3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

Cinema and cities both offer built environments of seductive experiential richness that allow the human subject to radically change. Additionally, as products of the same industrial transformation, there is a deep historical connection between them. The 21st century has seen the rise of networked megacities, fragmented migratory communities, and global digital mediascapes. In this course, we will learn about the ideas that sutured cities to the cinema, and how the 21st century is dissolving those bonds. This interdisciplinary course will begin with films a century old and run to the present. touching many cities, including Paris, London, New York, Los Angeles, Moscow, Hong Kong, Beijing, Mumbai, Algiers, and Rio.