CITIES & FILM
Lecture Notes and information in regards to the lecture title.
- The city in Modernism
- The possibility of an urban sociology
- The city as a public and private space
- The city in Postmodernism
- The relation of the individual to the crowd in the city
GEORG SIMMEL (1858-1918)
- German sociologist.
- Writes 'Metropolis and Mental Life' in 1903.
- Benjamin was influenced by him.
- Simmel is asked to lecture on the role of intellectual life in the city, but instead wrote about the effect of the city on the intellectual.
- Herbert Bayer, Lonely Metropolitan (Dadaism/Futurist Photograph).
URBAN SOCIOLOGY
- The city "engulfing" the human figure- a threat, but also dependent on the physical and manual labour.
ARCHITECT LOUIS SULLIVAN (186-1924)
- Creator of the modern skyscraper.
- An influential Architect and critic of the Chicago School.
- Invented the phrase "Form follows function".
- Mentor to Frank Lloyd Wright.
- Guaranty Building was built in 1894 (details on building v ornate- influenced by arts and crafts movement (embellished with terracotta blocks)- the inside of the building is very tightly organised into four zones- very ordered environment).CARSON PRIRIE STORE IN CHICAGO (1904)
- Skyscrapers represent the upwardly mobile city of business opportunity- America a "land of opportunity".
(Andrew Graham-Dixon, Art in America- BBC One)
- Fire cleared buildings in Chicago in 1871- made way for new design.
MANHATTA )1921) Paul Strand Charles Scheeler
- Strand is Photographer.
- Scheeler is Painter.
Film contains sixty-five shot in a loose, non structure image (ten minutes long).
The objective of the film is to explore the combination of photography and film.
Each frame provides a view of the city in an abstract composition.
Each figure within the city is a small cog within the mass city machine.
FORDISM: Mechanised labour relations
- Coined by Antonio Gramsci in his essay "Americanism and Fordism".
- The human body becomes part of the "machine"- maximum productivity and minimum effort through production lines ([Henry] Ford company).
- "The eponymous manufacturing system designed to spew out standardised, low-cost goods and afford it's workers decent enough wages to buy them"- De Grazia 2005, p.4.
MODERN TIMES, 1936, CHARLIE CHAPLIN
- Chaplin wrote, directed and starred.
- Chaplin stars as a factory worker on a production line- a parody of modern life.
- He suffers a mental breakdown and causes chaos in typical Chaplin fashion.
STOCK MARKET CRASH, 1929
- Lead to great depression
- Factories close
- "There's no way like the American way"- Margaret Bourke- White.
- Immigrants and manual labourers were most affected.
THE MAN WITH THE MOVIE CAMERA (1929)
- Silent documentary film which explores the role of the camera in the city.
- Range of cinematic techniques that the director invents in the film- fast, slow motion, tracking shots, overlays, etc- seeking to create a futuristic city, a commentary of the Soviet world- to bring about understanding and learning. The camera has access to both private and public situations.
FLANEUR
- The term flaneur comes from the French masculine noun flaneur (sp?)- which has the basic meanings of "stroller", "lounger", "saunterer" or "loafer"- which itself comes from the French verb flaner,
which means "to stroll".
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
- Thinks that the flaneur is the person who walks the city to explore and "feel" it. Apart from,
and a part of the crowd.
- Thinks art should capture the mood of the flaneur.
WALTER BENJAMIN
- Analytical tool in the idea of the flaneur in his own writing- also leads his life in this fashion.
- Berlin Chronicle/Berlin Childhood (memoirs and reflections of his own youth).
- Thinks about the experience of the city being both inside and outside- a cafe society (Parisian)- a point from which these observations can be made.
SUSAN SONTAG
- The photographer as a flaneur
- "The photographer is an armed version of the solitary walker..." (pg. 55)
FLANEUSE
- The invisible Flaneuese (?)- woman and the literature of modernity.
- Janet Wolff looks at the idea of the woman as a flaneuse in 'Therory, Culture & Society November',
1985, vol. 2. no. 3, 37-46
SUSAN BUCK-MORSS
- Examines Benjamin's arcade project- typically what we think of when we see a woman on the street is a "bag lady" or a prostitute- she proposes an alternative to this through photography, film, etc.
ARBUS/HOPPER
- Woman at a Counter Smoking, N.Y.C, 1962
- Automat (1927)
Forbodding figure in woman at counter... the darkness that surrounds the female figure has a depth- representative, deeper and darker in automat- the night is "clinging to her""- a similar sense in Arbus' image- just before or after something has happened, although we are not told directly what this is.
SOPHIE CALLE Suite Venitienne (1980)
- A flanuse in the sense that she creates photography that is a reflection of the city (Venice).
- Follows strangers, photographed without their knowledge and recorded their movements.
VENICE
- City as a labyrinth of streets and alleyways in which you can get lost but at the same time will always end up back where you belong.
- Don't Look Now (1973), Nicholas Roeg/Daphne DuMaurier.
THE DETECTIVE, 1980
- Photographer Sophie Calle orders a private detective to follow her- wants photographic
evidence of her own existence.
- Set in Paris.
- His photos and notes on hr are displayed next to her photos and notes about him.
CINDY SHERMAN, Untitled Film Stills, 1977-80
- Stereotypical figure of the woman in the city.
- Film noir tradition, where the woman, in some sense is almost lost/trapped by the city (low film angles, looming skyscrapers).
WEEGEE//ARTHUR FELIG (Ukrainian- name was supposed to be a play on the word Ouija, as people could understand his seemingly mythical process and speed of developing photographs).
- The dark side of the lower east of NYC.
- Press photographer in 1930's/40's.
- Followed the emergency services and documented their activity.
- Had a mobile darkroom in his car- could process them quickly and take them straight to the press- revolutionary instantaneous photography.
L.A Noire (2011)
- Based on the idea of noir city (1947 setting).
- The first film to be shown at the Tribecca Film Festival.
- Players must investigate leads, interrogate suspects, etc.
- Heavily influenced, and visual and contentuxal films influenced by film noir- homage to the genre (including an option to play the game in black and white)- also influenced by the 1980's film 'L.A Confidential'.
METROPOLIS (1929), Fritz Lang
- A picture of the city in the future.
- A city of cyborgs- repeated in 1982, 'Blade Runner'- depicting 2019 in the city of L.A.
PUBLIC/PRIVATE
- Anything that happens in the public is available for artistic interpretation (as stated by Law).
WALKER EVANS, Many are called (1938)
- Made with the use of a hidden camera, travelling on the subway with a camera hidden beneath his trench coat.
- Moments of intensely private, interior moments in the public space.
- The idea of people being alone and separate in the city, despite being surrounded by other people.
THE POSTMODERN CITY
- The idea of getting lost in Architecture.
- The city as a confusing and encompassing experience for the individual- negotiated and unraveled in a game-playing relationship.
JOEL MEYEROWITZ, Broadway and West 46th Steet, NY, 1976
- No sense of tradition and unity.
- Postmodern city reflects the mental state itself.
9/11 CITIZEN JOURNALISM- THE END OF THE FLANEUR?
- The interaction with the city in the case of the bombings- made it impossible to be a detatched observer.
- The body in the city, as well as being physically disintegrated, is destroyed in a mental capacity.
SURVEILLANCE CITY
- Enormous of "ramping up" in CCTV technologies from terrorism attacks and world threat.
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