Architectures of Revolt: The Cinematic City circa 1968

by Mark Shiel (Editor)

Overview

Coinciding with the fiftieth anniversary of the worldwide mass protest movements of 1968—against war, imperialism, racism, poverty, misogyny, and homophobia—the exciting anthology Architectures of Revolt explores the degree to which the real events of political revolt in the urban landscape in 1968 drove change in the attitudes and practices of filmmakers and architects alike.

In and around 1968, as activists and filmmakers took to the streets, commandeering public space, buildings, and media attention, they sought to re-make the urban landscape as an expression of utopian longing or as a dystopian critique of the established order. In Architectures of Revolt, the editor and contributors chronicle city-specific case studies from Paris, Berlin, Milan, and Chicago to New York, Los Angeles, Mexico City, and Tokyo. The films discussed range from avant-garde and agitprop shorts to mainstream narrative feature films. All of them share a focus on the city and, often, particular streets and buildings as places of political contestation and sometimes violence, which the medium of cinema was uniquely equipped to capture.

Contributors include: Stephen Barber, Stanley Corkin, Jesse Lerner, Jon Lewis, Gaetana Marrone, Jennifer Stob, Andrew Webber, and the editor.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781439910047
Publisher:	Temple University Press
Publication date:	06/01/2018
Series:	Urban Life, Landscape and Policy
Edition description:	1
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Mark Shiel is Reader in Film Studies and Urbanism in the Department of Film Studies at King’s College London. He is the author of Hollywood Cinema and the Real Los Angeles, and Italian Neorealism: Rebuilding the Cinematic City, and the co-editor of Screening the City and Cinema and the City: Film and Urban Societies in a Global Context.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations ix

Acknowledgments xi

Introduction: Cinema, Architecture, and Cities circa 1968 Mark Shiel 1

1 The Cinétracts, Détournement, and Social Space in Paris Jennifer Stob 35

2 Milan, the Cine City of 1968: Metamorphosis and Identity Gaetana Marrone 66

3 Inextinguishable Fire-or How to Make a Film in Berlin in 1968 Andrew J. Webber 91

4 Slouching toward Chicago in Search of Peace and Love: Medium Cool and Chicago 1968 Jon Lewis 112

5 New York, 1968 Stanley Corkin 141

6 "It's a Big Garage." Cinematic Images of Los Angeles circa 1968 Mark Shiel 164

7 Cinema and the Mexico City of 1968 Jesse Lerner 189

8 Tokyo 1969: Revolutionary Image-Thieves in the Disintegrating City Stephen Barber 212

Contributors 229

Film Title Index 231

Subject Index 235

Editorial Reviews

06/18/2018
Drawing connections between urban and architecture studies and cinema studies, the selections in this uneven but often insightful collection of academic essays look at the cinematic portrayal of nine cities in relation to the political protests of 1968. Gaetana Marrone writes about the portrayal of Milan in 1960s films such as Rocco and His Brothers and Teorema with fluency and flair, revealing how filmmakers such as Luchino Visconti and Pier Paolo Pasolini used the northern industrial center to critique post-WWII Italy’s “economic miracle.” Stephen Barber also does fine work looking at how two 1969 titles, Nagisa Oshima’s Diary of a Shinjuku Thief and Toshio Matsumoto’s Funeral Parade of Roses, captured Tokyo’s urban landscape after a period of “wide-ranging architectural expansion” and during a period of “outbreaks of irrepressible violence” between student activists and police. Unfortunately, there is also some unclear writing, often resulting from an overreliance on ill-defined jargon: Jennifer Stob, in her opening essay on Paris, refers to détournement multiple times before defining this term from the radical situationist movement. Editor Shiel’s introduction also tends toward the obscure, but he redeems himself with a deeply researched essay about Los Angeles. Though at times hard going, this collection will yield some enriching gems of scholarship to the serious film scholar. (July)

Publishers Weekly

"Although studies of art and politics and their many intersections in the late 1960s abound, editor Mark Shiel’s collection, Architectures of Revolt, is unique in its geographical scope. The variety of cities examined in the eight essays are a testament to 1968’s ongoing importance on a global scale.... [T]his collection is a persuasive and illuminating addition to studies of the interconnections among the social, political, cinematic and architectural movements of that tumultuous, ever-prescient year.... [W]ell-written and often provocative."— Film International

From the Publisher