To browse Academia. During the history of the cinema, cities and films have always been inspirational to one another. The city has been not only a constant source of inspiration for the most important trends and movements throughout film history Weimar city film, Expressionism, film noir, rubble war films, New Waves, auteurism, New realisms, Cold War science fiction and dystopian films, disaster movies etc but also the very texture on which the cinematic space was woven.
The artificial city from Neubabelsberg to the more recent Nollywood serves as a typical example of how film and city merge, blurring the boundaries between illusion and reality, and, in terms of production, becoming a symbol of a specific national cinema. The history of cinema has always been strongly connected to the urban development and representations and maintained its fascination with the urban landscape.
Film has completely re-constructed our urban experience and rendered it uncanny. On the other hand, rising from the primary points of the relationship between the artist, consciousness, and the social environment, the work of art- idea of an image-has the power to act upon this consciousness. Cinema has created a new vision as a popular entertainment among the art branches since "s.
Walter Benjamin, like Kracauer, the pioneer in the field of city and cinema, observed from the beginning of the century that the city formed the largest cultural communication system. These new forms of urban life accompany the common history of newborn cinema. The subject of the city has long been central in studies and writings from different fields; architecture, urban and film studies, literature and photography.
This is an exploratory paper, one that cuts across several disciplines with the intent of providing a wider knowledge on the cinematic of the city and its reproduction in filmic narratives. City space is both a filmic construction and an architectural construction. This paper suggests that filmic narratives are a major source for understanding the city and comprehending its processes of production.
