World Film Locations – serie

The rapid development of Hong Kong has occasioned the demolition of buildings and landscapes of historic significance, but film acts as a repository for memories of lost places, vanished vistas and material objects. Location shoots in Hong Kong have preserved many disappearing landmarks of the city, and the resulting films function as valuable and irreplaceable archives of the city’s evolution. Far more than a simple collection of movie locations, this book delivers a rare glimpse into the history of film production practices in Hong Kong. The locations described here are often not the most iconic; rather, they are the anonymous streets and back alleys used by local film studios in the 1960s and 70s. They are the garden cafes with outdoor seating near the Chinese University of Hong Kong where moments of conflict in romantic comedies erupt and dissipate. They are the old Kai Tak Airport, which channels rage and desire, and the tenement housing, which splits citizens into greedy landlords and the diligent working class and embodies old-day communal values. Modern Hong Kong horror films draw their power from the material character of home-grown convenient stores, shopping arcades and lost mansions found under modern high rises. As in the films of Wong Kar-wai and Johnnie To, readers will drift and dash through the streets of Central to the district’s periphery, almost recklessly, automatically, or for the sheer pleasure of roaming. The first of its kind in English, this book is more than a city guide to Hong Kong through the medium of film; it is a unique exploration of relationship between location and place and genre innovations in Hong Kong cinema.

Barcelona is one of the world’s most beautiful cities. A permanent showcase of the work of acclaimed architect Antoni Gaudí, it also has a long and rich cinematic legacy. Great directors from all over the world – among them Woody Allen, Pedro Almodóvar and Michelangelo Antonioni – have set their films there. World Film Locations: Barcelona is the first book of its kind to explore the rich cinematic history of this seductive Catalonian city.  The illuminating essays collected here cover essential themes of the city’s cinematic history, including the origins of cinema in Barcelona; the role of Ciutat Vella (old quarter) as a film set; the influential Barcelona School of the 1960s; the film presence of Gaudí and his work; changing attitudes and urban renewal before and after the 1992 Olympics; and the emergence of a new generation of female filmmakers that have made Barcelona the centre of their cinematic explorations. This book will be a welcome addition to the libraries of anyone enchanted by the beauty of Barcelona, whether in person on the big screen.

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.

Prague – known as ‘The City of Dreams’, ‘The Hundred-Spired City’ and, most significantly for this study, ‘Hollywood of the East’ – has played an important role in the history of the seventh art. The Czech capital often functions as an onscreen surrogate for other major European cities such as London, Paris, Venice, Vienna and Zurich. In exploring the intersection of the city and cinema, World Film Locations: Prague traverses the Czech capital’s topography, legendary sites and landmarks as they appear on screen – including Charles Bridge, Old Town, Malá Strana, Wenceslas Square, the Vlatava River and Prague Castle – in an internationally diverse range of exemplary films set there, such as The Student of Prague, the first feature-length horror film; the controversial Ecstasy, starring Hedy Lamarr before she became a Hollywood star; Czech New Wave films including Closely Observed Trains; Czech New Wave auteur Milos Forman’s critically acclaimed Amadeus; Steven Soderbergh’s Kafka; and action/adventure productions Mission Impossible, The Bourne Identity, Casino Royale and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, among others. Along with an historical overview of Prague in film, lengthier essays by leading film scholars and professors consider Prague’s iconic Barrandov Studios as well as the impact of World War II, the Cold War and the Prague Spring. This collection, an invaluable resource for the study of cinematic psychogeography, will be of great interest to students, scholars and aficionados of East-Central European film as well as literary, cultural and sociopolitical history.

An extraordinarily beautiful city that has been celebrated, criticised and studied in many films, San Francisco is both fragile and robust, at once a site of devastation caused by 1906 earthquake but also a symbol of indomitability in its effort to rebuild afterwards. Its beauty, both natural and manmade, has provided filmmakers with an iconic backdrop since the 1890s, and this guidebook offers an exciting tour through the film scenes and film locations that have made San Francisco irresistible to audiences and auteurs alike. Gathering more than forty short pieces on specific scenes from San Franciscan films, this book includes essays on topics that dominate the history of filmmaking in the city, from depictions of the Golden Gate Bridge, to the movies of Alfred Hitchcock, to the car chases that seem to be mandatory features of any thriller shot there. Some of America’s most famous movies – from Steven Spielberg’s Raiders of the Lost Ark to Hitchcock’s Vertigo to Don Siegel’s Dirty Harry – are celebrated alongside smaller movies and documentaries, such as The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill, to paint a complete picture of San Francisco in film. A range of expert contributors, including several members of the San Francisco Film Critics Circle, discuss a range of films from many genres and decades, from nineteenth-century silents to twentieth-century blockbusters.Audiences across the world, as well as many of the world’s greatest film directors – including Buster Keaton, Orson Welles, George Lucas, Francis Ford Coppola, David Fincher and Steven Soderbergh – have been seduced by San Francisco. This book is the ideal escape to the city by the bay for arm chair travellers and cinephiles alike.

São Paulo is the largest city in South America and the powerhouse of Brazil’s economy. A multi-racial metropolis with a diverse population of Asian, Arabic and European immigrants as well as migrants from other parts of Brazil, it is a global city with international reach. Films set in São Paulo often replace the postcard images of beautiful tropical beaches and laid-back lifestyles with working environments and the search for better opportunities. Bikinis and flip flops give way to urban subcultures, sport, entertainment and artistic movements. The ability to transcend national boundaries, and its resistance to stereotypical images of an 'exotic' Brazil, make São Paulo a fascinating location in which to explore Brazil’s changing economic and cultural landscapes.

Toronto is a changing city that has been a source of reflection and inspiration to writers and artists whose work focuses on the conditions and prospects of human life. A city on the move, it demands policies and regulation, and it offers the pleasures and perils of the massive and the anonymous. As a site of study, the city is inherently multidisciplinary, with natural ties to history, geography, sociology, architecture, art history, literature and many other fields. World Film Locations: Toronto explores and reveals the relationship between the city and cinema using a predominately visual approach. The juxtaposition of the images used in combination with insightful essays helps to demonstrate the role that the city has played in a number of hit films, including Cinderella Man, American Psycho and X-Men and encourages the reader to frame an understanding of Toronto and the world around us. The contributors trace Toronto’s emergence as an international city and demonstrate the narrative interests that it has continued to inspire among filmmakers, both Canadian and international. With support from experts in Canadian studies, the book’s selection of films successfully shows the many facets of Toronto and also provides insider’s access to a number of sites that are often left out of scholarship on Toronto in films, such as the Toronto International Film Festival. The 2014 release of this attractive volume will be a particularly welcome addition to the international celebrations of the city’s 180th anniversary.

A megalopolis of more than twelve million inhabitants, Moscow is a city with a rich and varied history. In 1918, following the Revolution, Moscow became the capital of the Soviet Union, and it remained capital of the Russian Federation after 1991. Moscow’s status as capital, from 1918 to the present, more or less coincides with its life on the silver screen, since there are very few preserved filmic depictions of the city from pre-Revolutionary years. In the Soviet era, film often served propaganda purposes; therefore, the image of Moscow on celluloid echoes the political ambitions of the country, and film locations and settings reflect the cultural agenda of the times. World Film Locations: Moscow compares and contrasts images from the past and present, giving the forty-six carefully selected scene reviews and seven spotlight essays a historical focus. With an inside look at the city’s film studio, Mosfilm, the book is essential for all armchair travellers and cinephiles alike.

Havana is among the world’s leading cinematic locales. In films made beyond the island as well as those created by local cineastes, Havana is depicted as a vibrant Caribbean city. The quantity and quality of the works representing this tropical cityscape attest to the prominence of this film location and underscore the need for a book dedicated to it. World Film Locations: Havana situates Havana as a modern city in pre-Revolutionary times, noting the architectural and cultural shifts evident during the revolution, and comments on recent reconfigurations of the city and its inhabitants in the wake of global forces. Among the forty-six scene reviews chosen to show the city in all its multifaceted-glory, films such as Our Man in Havana, I Am Cuba, Hello Hemingway, Habana Blues and Chico and Rita are bookended by seven insightful essays. The essays look at the history of revolutionary cinema in Cuba and consider documentary films, from the Latin American Newsreel to avant-garde experimental work, including the island’s documentary tradition showcasing local faces and places that have paved the way for present-day media and audio-visual art. The essays also explore the multifaceted film culture of the capital, the cine club movement, historic cinemas and film venues around the city, the abundance of film festivals such as the International Festival of New Latin American Cinema and film-themed cafeterias, restaurants, bookstores and markets.

Founded by the Puritans in 1630 and the site of many of the American Revolution’s major precursors and events (including the Boston Massacre, the Boston Tea Party and Paul Revere’s midnight ride, among others), Boston has played – and continues to play – an influential role in the shaping of the historic, intellectual, cultural and political landscapes of the United States. And Boston has a significantly rich tradition of cinematic representation. While Harvard is central to many of the films set in the Greater Boston area, World Film Locations: Boston considers the full spectrum of Boston’s abundant aesthetic potential, reviewing films located within as well as far beyond Harvard’s hallowed halls and ivy-covered gates. Many iconic American classics, blockbusters, romantic comedies and legal thrillers, as well as films examining Boston’s criminal under-side, particularly in juxtaposition to the city’s elitist high society, were filmed on location in the city’s streets and back lots. World Film Locations: Boston looks in depth into a highly select group of forty-six films such as Love Story, Good Will Hunting, The Friends of Eddy Coyle, and The Social Network, among many others, presented at the intersection of critical analysis and stunning visual critique (with material from the films themselves as well as photographs of the contemporary city locations). Featuring articles and film scene reviews written by a variety of leading contemporary film writers, critics and scholars, this book is a multimedia resource that will find a welcome audience in movie lovers in Beantown and beyond.

Celebrating Shanghai’s rich cinematic history, the films covered here represent a lengthy time period, from the first Golden Age of Chinese Cinema in the 1930s to the city’s status as an international production hub in 2013. Given the enduring status of Shanghai as the 'Paris of the East,' World Film Locations: Shanghai emphasizes the city’s cosmopolitan glamour through locations that are steeped in cinematic exoticism, while also probing the reality behind the image by investigating its backstreets and residential zones. To facilitate this study of Shanghai’s dual identity through reference to film locations, the book includes films from both the commercial and independent sectors, with a balance between images captured by local filmmakers and the visions of Western directors who have also utilized the city for their projects. With numerous essays that reflect Shanghai’s relationship to film and scene reviews of such iconic titles as Street Angel, Temptress Moon, Kung Fu Hustle, and Skyfall, World Film Locations: Shanghai is essential reading for all scholars of China’s urban culture.

World Film Locations: Buenos Aires explores this picturesque and passionate city (the second-largest in South America) as a stage for sociopolitical transformations and a key location in the international imagination as a site of cultural export. The book uncovers the many reasons why Buenos Aires attracts not only tourists but also artists and filmmakers who explore the city and its iconography as well as its cultural and sociopolitical turbulence. A set of six essays anchor this volume; contributors consider a range of key topics related to the city onscreen, including tango, villas miseria (shantytowns), dictatorship and democracy and science fiction and the future of the city. World Film Locations: Buenos Aires is rounded out with in-depth reviews of nearly fifty key films – The Hour of the Furnaces, Nine Queens, and Evita among them – each illustrated by screenshots, current location imagery and corresponding maps for travellers and movie buffs to use as they navigate this rich cinematic city.

A filmic guidebook of the Greek capital, World Film Locations: Athens takes readers to film locations in the central historical district with excursions to the periphery of Athens – popular neighbourhoods, poor suburbs and slums often represented in postwar neorealist films – and then on to garden cities and upper class suburbs, especially those preferred by the auteurs of the 1970s. Of course, no Grecian vacation would be complete without a visit to the sea, and summer resorts, hotels and beaches near Athens are frequent backdrops for international productions. However, more recent economic strife has emptied city neighbourhoods, created urban violence and caused an increase in riots in the Mediterranean city, and representations of this on film are juxtaposed with images of the eternal and idyllic city. Featuring both Greek and foreign productions from various genres and historical periods, World Film Locations: Athens ultimately works to establish connections between the various aesthetics of dominant representations of Athens.

Florence, with its rich history, privileged place in the canon of Western art, and long-standing relationship with the moving image, is a cinematic city equal to Venice or Rome. World Film Locations: Florence explores the city as it is manifested in the minds of filmmakers and filmgoers. Contributors to the collection consider a wide range of topics, including the tourist’s perception of Florence, representations of art and artists on screen, the camera-friendly Tuscan countryside and mouthwatering local cuisine and filmic adaptations of canonical Italian literature. Through scene reviews of films, including Bobby Deerfield, A Room with a View, Tea with Mussolini and Under the Tuscan Sun, World Film Locations: Florence delves deeper into the makeup of the city, looking at both familiar and unfamiliar locations through the lens of such filmmakers as Roberto Rossellini, Mario Monicelli, Brian DePalma and Ridley Scott.

A vibrant city and country nestled at the foot of the Malaysian peninsula, Singapore has long been a crossroads, a stopping point and a cultural hub where goods, inventions and ideas are shared and traded. Though Singapore was home to a flourishing Chinese and Malay film industry in the 1950s and 1960s, between independence in 1965 and the early 1990s, few movies were made in Singapore. A new era for cinema in the sovereign city-state started with the international recognition of Eric Khoo’s first features, followed by a New Wave comprised of graduates from local film schools. In recent years the Singapore film industry has produced commercially successful fare, such as the horror movie The Maid, as well as more artistic films like Sandcastle, the first Singaporean film to be selected for International Critic’s Week at Cannes and Ilo Ilo, which won the Caméra d’or at Cannes in 2013. Covering the myths that surround Singaporean film and exploring the realities of the movies that come from this exciting city, World Film Locations: Singapore introduces armchair travellers to a rich, but less known, national cinema

The capital of New South Wales and the most populous city in Australia, Sydney has been represented onscreen since the earliest days of cinema. An eclectic combination of tough inner-city suburbs, beachside communities and green outlying exurbs, Sydney offers many intriguing possibilities to filmmakers. The tensions and differences found among its many multicultural inhabitants, poorer and wealthier suburbs and central business district and beaches are reflected, exaggerated, and critiqued in memorable movies such as The Last Wave, Puberty Blues, Strictly Ballroom and Little Fish, among many others. Sydney is a city where sun, sports and surf rub shoulders with crime, racial tensions and class divides.The contributors to this collection take readers on a virtual tour of Sydney, from Kings Cross, the city’s red light district and frequent film location, to the famous beaches, to explore how representations in movies have both played into and influenced how we think of these spaces and those that frequent them. Essays also consider the experimental film group UBU Films, who shot shorts and features in and around Sydney’s inner city suburbs during the 1960s and early 1970s, and the Sydney Opera House, one of the world’s most recognizable landmarks, and its role in movies both Australian and international.Packed with full-colour photographs, this is the first book of its kind to deal specifically with Sydney and film. It will find a grateful audience among film lovers, casual viewers, tourists and film historians.

Freedom and democracy. Bills and laws. Bureaucracy and red tape. Washington D.C., the capital of the United States, is known for many things, most of them related to the inner workings of the government. But it is also a city of carefully planned parks, trees exploding with cherry blossoms in spring, and bright sunshine polishing the gleaming white of stately memorials. With no shortage of iconic American landscapes, such as the vast National Mall; buildings, from the White House and the Capitol to the Watergate Hotel and the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts; and monuments, including the Washington Monument and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, it is at once synonymous with the country it governs and a world apart.This friction animates and attracts filmmakers, who use the District's landmarks as a shorthand to express and investigate contemporary ideals and concerns about American society. Films set there both celebrate and castigate the grand American experiment it symbolizes. From Frank Capra’s 1939 Mr. Smith Goes to Washington to the alien invasion blockbuster Independence Day, films set in Washington depict our most ardent hopes and bring to life our darkest fears.World Film Locations: Washington, D.C., collects essays and articles about Washington film history and locations. Featuring explorations of carefully chosen film scenes and key historical periods, the book examines themes, directors, and depictions and is illustrated with evocative movie stills, city maps and location photographs. Taken as a whole, this is essential reading for any cinephile who has ever wondered how a bill becomes a law.

Malta has served as a beautiful backdrop for films for nearly as long as there has been a film industry. This entry in the World Film Locations series traces the history of Malta on screen, from bigbudget blockbusters to modest indie pictures. The locations Malta offers range widely, from grand fortified harbours and stunning cliffs to quaint villages and Baroque palaces. That diversity has enabled the island to double for countless locations, including ancient Troy and Alexandria, as well as Greece, Israel, and other Mediterranean and Middle Eastern regions, while its well-known water tanks have proved to be perfect for shooting ocean scenes. Packed with illustrations, World Film Locations: Malta examines a number of films made in Malta, and will be a must-read for tourists, film buffs and scholars alike.

The prototypical rust belt city, Cleveland has long served as an emblem of late twentieth-century urban decay. But recent decades have brought a cultural and economic renaissance – a revival that has been reflected and aided by the growing number of films being shot on location there. This new entry in the World Film Locations series offers the first-ever extended look at Cleveland on screen. Richly illustrated with images from dozens of productions, it reveals Cleveland to be usefully chameleonic, appealing to some filmmakers for its modern downtown's ability to mimic more prominent (and more expensive) cities, to others for the way its shuttered factories and decaying docks signify contemporary urban distress. With entries on such classics as The Fortune Cookie , The Deer Hunter , A Christmas Story and Marvel's The Avengers , as well as lesser-known films, the volume reveals Cleveland to be a far more compelling, and far more varied, on-screen presence than even most film buffs would expect. Like all the books in this series, World Film Locations: Cleveland is designed to appeal to cinephiles and scholars alike, while also serving as a silver screen souvenir for those who make the city their home as well as for those who visit it.

World Film Locations: Los Angeles Volume 2 is an engaging and highly visual city-wide tour of both well known and slightly lesser known films shot on location in one of the birthplaces of cinema and the ‘screen spectacle’. It pairs 50 synopses of carefully chosen film scenes with evocative full-colour film stills.When the World Film Locations series was launched in 2011, with volumes on Los Angeles, New York, Paris and Tokyo, the world was a different place. Although interest in film locations has grown steadily for years as people seek to walk in the footsteps of their cinematic idols by visiting sites from their favorite movies – the recent global lockdown seems to have only increased an appetite for cinetourism; prompting us to consider a second volume for one of the world’s most evocative and enduring locations. The city of Los Angeles, with its meandering sun-baked sweep and beautifully fractured topography, continues to lure filmmakers into its clutches – affording an endless panoply of locations to prop up both character and story. Since 2011, thousands of new productions have made the most of what the city has to offer; using, reusing and discovering places that will surely become sites of pilgrimage in years to come - and while this volume includes just 50 of them, our modest selection is carefully curated to compliment volume 1 and further reveal both the well-known and more hidden parts of a Los Angeles in constant flux. The heart of Hollywood’s star-studded film industry for more than a century, Los Angeles and its abundant and ever-changing locales – from the Santa Monica Pier to the infamous and now-defunct Ambassador Hotel – have set the scene for a wide variety of cinematic treasures, from Chinatown to Forrest Gump, Falling Down to the coming-of-age classic Boyz n The Hood. This second volume marks an engaging citywide tour of the many films shot on location in this birthplace of cinema and the screen spectacle. World Film Locations: Los Angeles Vol 2 pairs fifty incisive synopses of carefully chosen film scenes – both famous and lesser-known – with an accompanying array of evocative full-colour film stills, demonstrating how motion pictures have contributed to the multifarious role of the city in our collective consciousness, as well as how key cinematic moments reveal aspects of its life and culture that are otherwise largely hidden from view. Insightful essays and interviews throughout turn the spotlight on the important directors, iconic locations, thematic elements and historical periods that provide insight into Los Angeles and its vibrant cinematic culture. Rounding out this information are city maps with information on how to locate key features, as well as photographs showing featured locations as they appear now. A guided tour of the City of Angels conducted by the likes of John Cassavetes, Robert Altman, Nicholas Ray, Michael Mann and Roman Polanski, World Film Locations: Los Angeles Vol 2 is a concise and user-friendly guide to how Los Angeles has captured the imaginations of both filmmakers and those of us sitting transfixed in theatres worldwide.

Be they period films, cult classics or elaborate directorial love letters, New York City has played – and continues to play – a central role in the imaginations of filmmakers and moviegoers worldwide. The stomping grounds of King Kong, it is also the place where young Jakie Rabinowitz of The Jazz Singer realizes his Broadway dream. Later, it is the backdrop against which taxi driver Travis Bickle exacts a grisly revenge.The inaugural volume in an exciting new series from Intellect, World Film Locations: New York pairs incisive profiles of quintessential New York filmmakers – – among them Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese, Sidney Lumet and Spike Lee – with essays on key features of the city’s landscape that have appeared on the big screen, from the docks to Coney Island, Times Square to the Statue of Liberty. More than forty-five location-specific scenes from films made and set in New York are separately considered and illustrated with screen shots and photographs of the locations as they appear now. For film fans keen to follow the cinematic trail either physically or in the imagination, this pocket-sized guide also includes city maps with information on how to locate key features.

World Film Locations: Tokyo gives readers a kaleidoscopic view of one of the world’s most complex and exciting cities through the lens of world cinema. 50 scenes from classic and contemporary films explore how motion pictures have shaped the role of Tokyo in our collective consciousness, as well as how these cinematic moments reveal aspects of the life and culture of a city that are often hidden from view. Complimenting these scenes from such varied films as Tokyo Story, You Only Live Twice, Godzilla and Enter the Void are six spotlight essays that take us from the wooden streets of pre-nineteenth-century Edo to the sprawling 'what-if' megalopolis of science fiction anime.Illustrated throughout with dynamic screen captures World Film Locations: Tokyo is at once a guided tour of Japan’s capital conducted by the likes of Akira Kurosawa, Samuel Fuller, Chris Marker and Sofia Coppola while also being an indispensible record of how Tokyo has fired both the imaginations of individuals working behind the camera and those of us sitting transfixed in movie theatres.

An exciting and visually focused tour of the diverse range of films shot on location in London, World Film Locations: London presents contributions spanning the Victorian era, the swinging ’60s and the politically charged atmosphere following the 2005 subway bombings. Essays exploring key directors, themes and historical periods are complemented by reviews of important scenes that offer particular insight into London's relationship to cinema. The book is illustrated throughout with full-colour film stills and photographs of cinematic landmarks as they appear now – as well as city maps to aid those keen to investigate them.

The heart of Hollywood’s star-studded film industry for more than a century, Los Angeles and its abundant and ever-changing locales – from the Santa Monica Pier to the infamous and now-defunct Ambassador Hotel – have set the scene for a wide variety of cinematic treasures, from Chinatown to Forrest Gump, Falling Down to the coming-of-age classic Boyz n The Hood. This volume marks an engaging citywide tour of the many films shot on location in this birthplace of cinema and the screen spectacle. World Film Locations: Los Angeles pairs fifty incisive synopses of carefully chosen film scenes – both famous and lesser-known – with an accompanying array of evocative full-colour film stills, demonstrating how motion pictures have contributed to the multifarious role of the city in our collective consciousness, as well as how key cinematic moments reveal aspects of its life and culture that are otherwise largely hidden from view. Insightful essays throughout turn the spotlight on the important directors, thematic elements and historical periods that provide insight into Los Angeles and its vibrant cinematic culture. Rounding out this information are city maps with information on how to locate key features, as well as photographs showing featured locations as they appear now. A guided tour of the City of Angels conducted by the likes of Robert Altman, Nicholas Ray, Michael Mann and Roman Polanski, World Film Locations: Los Angeles is a concise and user-friendly guide to how Los Angeles has captured the imaginations of both filmmakers and those of us sitting transfixed in theatres worldwide.

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.

'We’ll always have Paris,' Humphrey Bogart assures Ingrid Bergman in the oft-quoted farewell scene from Casablanca in which Bogart’s character, hard-hearted restaurateur Rick Blaine, bids former lover Ilsa Lund goodbye. The backdrop against which they first fell in love, Paris later serves as a reminder of their deep mutual longings. And with a host of different realisations by filmmakers from Philip Kaufman to Julien Leclercq to Woody Allen, there is no question that Paris has likewise endured in the memories of cinephiles worldwide. World Film Locations: Paris takes readers on an unforgettable tour of the City of Lights past and present through the many films that have been set there. Along the way, we revisit iconic tourist sites from the Eiffel Tower – whose stairs and crossbars inspired more than one famous chase scene – to the Moulin Rouge overlooking the famously seedy Place Pigalle. Other films explore lesser-known quarters usually tucked away from the tourist’s admiring gaze. Handsomely illustrated with full-colour film stills and contemporary photographs, more than fifty scenes are individually considered with special attention to their use of Paris’s topography as it intersects with characters, narrative and plot. A host of important genres and cinematic movements are featured, including poetic realism, the New Wave, cinéma-verité, the literary works of the Left Bank Group, and Luc Besson’s slickly stylised cinéma du look. Meanwhile, essays foreground contributions from Francophone African directors and émigré filmmakers. For centuries, Paris has reigned over the popular imagination. For those who have visited or those who have only imagined it through art, literature and film, World Film Locations: Paris presents a wonder-filled cinematic exploration of the mythical city that fans of French cinema – and new initiates – will appreciate.

From Fatih Akin’s Head-On (2004) to Sydney Lumet’s Murder on the Orient Express (1974), World Film Locations: Istanbul offers a compelling look at many films shot on location in this multicultural metropolis. Central to this volume are the film industry’s changing representations of Istanbul. The book includes essays focusing on diverse subjects related to the city and its representation, exploring Istanbul’s place in the imagination of audiences and filmmakers. Articles include an examination of the significance of Istanbul in the critically acclaimed director Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s cinema, the city’s representation in films made in the West and in Turkey in different periods, as well as articles focusing on key locations, such as the famous train station Haydarpasa and Beyoglu/Pera.With 38 insightful short reviews the book includes illustrative screen-grabs from the films discussed and present day images of each location, offering a compelling picture of this historic and culturally stimulating city and its changing representation in cinema, as well as cinema’s role in shaping our perception of the city.

World Film Locations: Madrid is a trip through the urban space conceived as film location. The premise is that these locations must have been protagonist of films shot in Madrid since the silent era to the present. Madrid is the film capital of the Hispanic World from the standpoint of production. Being also one of the most visited cities in the world, this book tries to discover its most imaginative side for the visitor who dares to take this journey. But it is a tour that is not covered in the guidebooks. The different suggestions are explained in a series of essays written by experts, which analyses the role that the city plays in the stories filmed in Madrid. This is a city of contrasts where lives high culture (the best universities, the Museo del Prado, etc.), with the most popular and sparkling nightlife that began with La Movida and Almodóvar.These essays account for this life contrast, addressing from the corralas (popular architecture) in Egdar Neville’s films, to the underground cinema of Iván Zulueta. Madrid’s spaces and their films are visually discussed as well through 44 microanalysis of sequences, whose selection criteria has been its importance in the plot and its ability to represent the true spirit of the city, rather than its tourist attractive. Casual visitors or permanent inhabitants, and general lovers of Spanish culture in a broad sense, will find in these pages reasons to wander through Madrid’s films and streets.

World Film Locations: Vienna provides a panorama of international motion pictures shot on location in Austria's once imperical capital. Informative reviews of 46 film scenes and evocative essays examine for the first time Vienna's relationship to cinema outside the waltz fantasies shot in the studios of Hollywood, London, Paris, Berlin... and Vienna. Illustrations and screen-grabs are set alongside current images, as well as city maps locating ‘cinematic Vienna’. A Vienna at the crossroads of a turbulent history, as a source of great music and literature, and a site of world-famous architecture ranging from gothic cathedrals and baroque palaces to Jugendstil (Vienna's art nouveau) to the eco-challenges of the postmodern is revealed. Spotlight essays cover the images that evoke the end of the Austro-Hungarian Empire; the pioneering filmmaking of Willi Forst and Walter Reisch in the 1930s; Vienna's role in the entertainment cinema of the Third Reich; opulent royal epics of the 1950s and the city as backdrop for international moviemaking; Jewish filmmakers and their take on lost cultural imagery; and a startling New Wave cinema from filmmakers such as Michael Haneke, Barbara Albert and Ulrich Seidl.