Cities in Transition: The Moving Image and the Modern Metropolis

The city is one of the great protagonists in cinema - a modernist inspiration for silent classics such as Metropolis (1926) and a dense urban jungle in The Matrix (1999) - yet there have been few attempts to grasp the cultural and aesthetic nature of its role in media of the moving image. This volume offers an ambitious collection of essays discussing this complex and enduring relationship, and showing how early cinema, digital technology and changing urban geographies have all impacted upon ideas and representations of the modern city. Amongst the films discussed are Metropolis, The Matrix, Peeping Tom (1960), Performance (1970), Sans Soleil (1983) and Amores perros (2000). Contributions come from the fields of film studies, cultural theory, architecture and design, as well as filmmakers Patrick Keiller and Chris Petit.