Jez Conolly – författare

Outside of the capital London, no other British city has attracted more film-makers than Liverpool. Sometimes standing in for London, New York, Chicago, Paris, Rome or Moscow, and sometimes playing itself – or a version of its own past in Beatles biopics – Liverpool is an adaptable filmic backdrop that has attracted film-makers to its ports for decades. A place of passion, humour and pride, Liverpool evokes caverns and cathedrals, ferries and football grounds; it is a city so vivid we see it clearly even if we’ve never been there. From the earliest makers of moving images – among them the Mitchell & Kenyon film company, the Lumière brothers and pioneering early cinematographer Claude Friese-Greene – who preserved the city, the river, the docks, the streets and the people, Liverpool has endured as a cinematic destination. This collection celebrates that survival instinct and will be welcomed by enthusiasts of British cities, films and culture.

With its rich political and literary history, Dublin is a sought after destination for cinematographers who have made use of the city''s urban streetscapes and lush pastoral settings in many memorable films – among them Braveheart, The Italian Job and the 2006 musical drama Once. Throughout the book, a series of essays by leading film scholars spotlight familiar actors, producers, and directors as well as some of the themes common to films shot in Dublin, including literature, politics, the city''s thriving music scene and its long history of organized crime.

World Film Locations: Dublin aims to present a selective snapshot of the city through the medium of the movies made or set in it and allow the reader to inhabit these spaces, passing through a stimulating choice of words and pictures that inform and precipitate an imagined exploration. It is a collection of over 40 reviews of scenes from films either shot or set in Dublin, illustrated by images from the scenes in question and photographs of locations, often as they are today. Together, the words and images expose the relationship between a scene’s setting and its impact on the viewer. The short scene reviews are interspersed with more detailed, meditative essays that are designed to examine in greater depth some of the key aspects of Dublin as seen onscreen; the city’s political and literary histories are appraised, as are its music scene, its familiar faces, its element of organised crime and its fluctuating attributes before, during and after the Celtic Tiger era. Taken as a whole, this book constitutes a rare written instance of Dublin encapsulated in moments of film, brought together and supplemented by a pictorial toolkit designed to enable a conceptual tour of the city in its various incarnations.

Though the creative community of Reykjavík, Iceland, has earned a well-deserved reputation for its unique artistic output – most notably the popular music that has emerged from the city since the 1980s – Reykjavík’s filmmakers have received less attention than they merit. World Film Locations: Reykjavík corrects this imbalance, shedding new light on the role of cinema in a country that, partly because of its small population, produces more films per capita than any other in the world. The contributors to this volume trace cinema in Iceland from the 1979 establishment of the Icelandic Film Fund – before which the country’s film industry barely existed – through to today. In a series of illuminating scene reviews, they show how rapidly the city has changed over the past thirty years. In thematic spotlight articles, they go on to explore such topics as the relationship between Iceland and its capital city; youth culture and night life; the relationship between film and the local music community; cinematic representations of Scandinavian crime; and filmmakers’ response to the 2008 banking crisis. Together, these varied contributions show how films shot in Reykjavík have been shaped both by Iceland’s remoteness from the rest of the world and by Icelandic filmmakers’ sense that the city remains forever on the brink of desolate and harsh wilderness.