Cinema and the postindustrial city

Call for papers
Association of American Geographers Annual
Meeting
8-12 April 2014 Tampa FL

Organiser: Johan Andersson, Department of
Geography, King’s College London

This session explores how the economic reorganisation of the city since the
1960s has impacted on the production, distribution, and mise-en-scène of urban
cinema. While there is a significant literature in economic geography on
post-Fordist changes in the film industry, this session specifically welcomes
scholarship that links the interconnected restructuring of the city and the
film industry with visual, aesthetic and narrative developments in urban
cinema. Such approaches may focus on how new trends in on-location shooting,
technical innovations (with regards to sound, lighting, digital animation,
lighter equipment and so on) and changes in the distribution of film (TV, video
and online) have resulted in novel modes of representing the city. Close readings
of individual films or genres that explore the changing occupational class
structure of post-Fordist cities (yuppie, ghetto and gentrification films as
well as corporate and legal thrillers for example) or the identity politics
associated with new urban social movements (feminist cinema, New Queer Cinema,
representations of race) are particularly welcome.

Topics may include but are not limited
to:

Representations of urban
space/landscape

The political economy of film
industries in postindustrial cities and the role of film/television in the
cultural economy of cities

Film as urban branding

The politics and economics of
on-location shooting

Theoretical approaches to space/place
in contemporary film studies, and to the moving image in urban studies

The gendered, racialised, and sexual
geographies of urban cinema

Representations of class

The hedonistic city in film

Urban crisis and cinema

Abstracts of up to 250 words to Johan Andersson by October 1, 2013.