City Symphonies
As a student of film, I have come to understand that cities are prime subjects for cinema. "The cinematic city is always a space of transformation and conflict, a site where different social forces and political interests meet and clash, where the past and the present coexist, where the imaginary and the real intersect." (Ivan Villarmea-Alvarez's On City and Cinema, 2015)
Villarmea-Alvarez's On City and Cinema (2015) made me understand that cities are ‘vast, multifaceted and chaotic’ entities that are constantly changing, making them challenging but rewarding subjects for us filmmakers. By creating narratives around the city, cinema can help shape our understanding of urban space, which led me to make more avant-garde films and one focused on City Symphonies.
A Propos de Nice (Concerning Nice, 1930) by Jean Vigo
During this time, I was inspired by Vigo's A Propos de Nice (1930), which uses the camera to document the city of Nice and highlights both its natural beauty and its ugly, industrialized underbelly. He contrasts shots of the city's luxurious hotels and beautiful beaches with images of factories belching smoke and workers laboring in difficult conditions, capturing the tensions between nature and industry and invites viewers to consider the environmental impact of unchecked urbanization. Through this film, I realized how a film can capture the sensory experience of the city, conveying the sights, sounds, and even smells of urban life.
"The city is a fundamental element of cinematic discourse, which operates not only as a mere backdrop, but as an active participant in the construction of meaning and narrative." (Ivan Villarmea-Alvarez's On City and Cinema, 2015)
London (1994) by Patrick Keiller
Keiller's London (1994) similarly uses the camera to explore the urban environment, revealing the ways in which the city is shaped by political, economic, and social forces. The film offered me critical perspective on London's built environment, revealing the ways in which the city's architecture and infrastructure reflect and perpetuate systems of power and inequality. By focusing on London's physical geography, I could relate to the walk I took around London and how there is impact of urban planning on the environment and on the society more broadly.
"Film can act as a spatial intervention, challenging existing power relations and producing new spatial imaginaries that can inform struggles for social and environmental justice" (p. 12, Patrick Keiller's Film as Spatial Critique, 2007).
Los Angeles Plays Itself (2003) by Thom Andersen
My favourite film of this journey, which impacted me the most as an artist, was Andersen's Los Angeles Plays Itself (2003) which uses the city of Los Angeles as a backdrop for a meditation on the representation of cities in film. The film offers a critical perspective on Hollywood's portrayal of the city, revealing the ways in which the film industry has created an idealized and often inaccurate image of Los Angeles. I identified that the film references and deconstructs numerous films, highlighting the intertextual nature of cinema and the way that films shape our perceptions of reality. By exploring Los Angeles Plays Itself (2003) and the gap between reality and representation which it exposes, I learnt how a film can shape our understanding of the urban environment. Andersen's film offers important insights into the ways in which urban space is constructed, experienced, and represented in cinema. I could identify the spatial dimensions of the city, which reveals the hidden connections between different parts of the urban landscape. Los Angeles Plays Itself (2003), has had an impact on postmodernism in cinema through its use of self-reflexivity and intertextuality. I learnt how the dissonance between the city as it is experienced by residents and the version of the city is presented on screen.
"Film has the ability to reveal the hidden dimensions of urban life, to expose the inequalities and injustices that are often obscured by the city's surface appearance." (Patrick Keiller's Film as Spatial Critique, 2007).
Exploring the cinematic city has broadened my understanding of the relationship between human beings and the natural world. These films offer a critical perspective on the impact of urbanization and highlight the complex and often fraught relationships between human beings, the way a city is physically designed and organized, physically, socially and culturally, and how these elements influence the lives of its inhabitants. Through the use of cinematic techniques, these films offer viewers an immersive and sensory experience of the cityscape, encouraging us to reflect on our own relationship to the urban environment.
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Bibliography
Andersen, Thom (2003). Los Angeles Plays Itself (2003) [online]. Available at: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0379357/. [Accessed March 3rd 2023]
Keiller, Patrick (2007). Critical Architecture, Film as Spatial Critique. Routledge. [online]. Available at: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9780203945667-21/film-spatial-critique-patrick-keiller. [Accessed March 3rd 2023]
Keiller, Patrick (1994). London (1994) [online]. Available at: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110377/. [Accessed March 2nd 2023]
Vigo, Jean (1930). A Propos de Nice (1930) [online]. Available at: https://vimeo.com/80156041. [Accessed March 3rd 2023].
Villarmea Álvarez, Iván (2015), 'On City and Cinema', Documenting Cityscapes: Urban Change in Contemporary Non-Fiction Film (New York, NY, 2015; online edn, Columbia Scholarship Online [online]. Available at: https://doi.org/10.7312/columbia/9780231174534.003.0002. [Accessed March 2nd 2023]
Villarmea Álvarez, Iván (2015), 'On City and Cinema', Documenting Cityscapes: Urban Change in Contemporary Non-Fiction Film. Columbia University Press [online]. Available at: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7312/alva17452. [Accessed March 2nd 2023]
