Cities Made of Cinema.

This article explores the relationship between film and cities, focusing on how cities have influenced cinema and how cinema has shaped our understanding of urban spaces. It reviews four books that examine different aspects of this relationship, including censorship debates in early twentieth-century urban America, Black filmmaking in Los Angeles, location shooting in San Francisco, and the global circulation of urban imagery in film. The books highlight the intersections of regulation, race, and capital in the construction of cinematic representations of cities. The article provides a detailed analysis of each book's contributions to the field of film and urban history. It also discusses the representation of cities in Hollywood films, contrasting the depictions of San Francisco and Los Angeles in films from the late 1960s and early 1970s. The emergence of the L.A. Rebellion filmmakers, a group of Black independent filmmakers who focused on South Central Los Angeles, is also explored. The article mentions the book "Noir Urbanisms," which offers a global perspective on cinematic urban history by examining the portrayal of cities in film noir. Overall, the article emphasizes the importance of considering the political and economic factors that shape the representation of cities in film. [Extracted from the article]