Filming the city: the case of New York 3700-KON65-AL
The purpose of the class is to present a complex case study of representation of New York City in American and international film, as seen through the key works of cinema. Each class will be focused on explaining one specific aspect of the city’s representation, but each meeting will also draw a wider historical, cultural, aesthetic and social context within each given work was created. Each cited film will be additionally discussed within the context of a specific director’s work, pointing to stylistic traits and thematic interests. The main context, though, will be provided by the social and cultural history of the city itself – since its foundation two centuries ago to the present day.
Below find the list of the films and topics, to which classes will be devoted, together with a list of general tendencies the chosen films are characteristic of:
- Early New York newsreels
- Silent and part-talkie portrayals of New York (Harold Lloyd’s “Speedy”, Alan Crosland’s “The Jazz Singer”)
- 1930s New York in musical and gangster film
- Film noir and new forms of realism in representing New York (Jules Dassin’s “Naked City”)
- Avant-garde New York: From “Mannahata” to the Beatniks
- Early independent portrayals of the city: Films of Morris Engel
- Andy Warhol and New York of the 1960s
- Black citizen’s New York: from early attempts to blaxploitation
- Police Drama of 1970s: New forms of realism (Sidney Lumet, William Friedkin)
- New York’s Bard: Romantic vision of New York in Woody Allen’s films
- Punk and 1980s: Jim Jarmusch and New York’s collapse
- Ronald Reagan’s New York: from “Working Girl” to “Bright Lights, Big City”
- 1990s and the Era of Yuppie: The Films of Whit Stillman
- New York Dreamed Up: Walter Hill, Darren Aronofsky
- New York in New Century: 9/11 and the life following a national trauma
- Polish people in New York: Polish stories in New York film
The form of the class is a lecture with elements of in-class discussion, richly illustrated with selected film clips.
Type of course
Prerequisites (description)
Bibliography
Literatura zalecana:
Jan Zakrzewski, NY, NY, Nowy Jork, Warszawa 1980.
Philip Lopate (ed.), Writing New YorL A Literary Anthology, New York 2008.
James Sanders, Celluloid Skyline: New York and the Movies, New York 2002.
Wojciech Karpiński, W Central Parku, Warszawa 2010.
Janusz Głowacki, Polowanie na karaluchy, dowolne wydanie
Lech Majewski, Szczury Manhattanu, Poznań 1993.
George Chauncey, Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World 1890-1940, New York 1994.
Rem Koolhaas, Deliryczny Nowy Jork, Kraków 2013
Additional information
Additional information (registration calendar, class conductors, localization and schedules of classes), might be available in the USOSweb system: