The Mumbai Slum: Aerial Views and Embodied Memories
Ranjani Mazumdar
In this third and final part of our Slums series, Ranjani Mazumdar discusses two recent films that have created "embodied cartographies" of Mumbai's Dharavi.
vol. 4
MEDIAPOLIS LIVE: London – Gateway to Cinema and Media Studies Symposium
Brendan Kredell
Charlotte Brunsdon, Pamela Wojcik, Malini Guha, and Kulraj Phullar discuss liminal spaces of inclusion/exclusion and South Asian film at the London: Gateway to Cinema and Media Studies Symposium
The Gamification and Domestication of Slum Voyeurism: From Poverty Porn to Aesthetics of Precarity
Elmo Gonzaga
In the second part of our Slum series, Elmo Gonzaga probes the ethics of journalistic, cinematic, and gamified images of informal settlements in Southeast Asia and Hong Kong.
The Origins of Slums, Capitalism and the Shortcomings of Cinema
Igor Krstić
How have slums been represented onscreen? In the first installment of a three-part series, Igor Krstić considers the history of the cinematic representation of slums and examines the capacity of visual media to portray the complex relationships between capitalism and urban development.
Infrastructural Sovereignty: IsumaTV at the 2019 Venice Art Biennale
Malini Guha
Malini Guha discusses how IsumaTV's exhibition at the 2019 Venice Art Biennale manifests notions of infrastructural media sovereignty.
The Mediapolis Q&A: Ofer Eliaz’s Cinematic Cryptonymies
Angelo Restivo
In this installment of the Mediapolis Q&A, Angelo Restivo interviews Ofer Eliaz about his new book Cinematic Cryptonomies: The Absent Body in Postwar Film.
Textures of Visibility: The City/Essay/Film Symposium
Anna Viola Sborgi
Anna Sborgi discusses the recent University College London symposium on the essay film and the urban, concentrating on the form's potential to depict socially marginal positions as well as capital's embedding in the city.
A Phenomenological Reading of Jane Jacobs’ Death and Life of Great American Cities
David Seamon
David Seamon explores urbanist Jane Jacobs as a phenomenologist, pointing to her understanding of neighborhoods a place-grounded choreography facilitated by interacting physical and human features and processes.
Landscape as Loneliness in The Last Picture Show
Daryl Meador
Daryl Meador explores how the cinematography, soundscape, and generic context of Texas in The Last Picture Show not only evoke alienation but articulate it to settler colonialism.
Hemispheric Conversations Urban Art Project: Celebrating Histories of Industrial Labor and Potential Futures of Ecological Abundance
Caitlin Bruce
In this issue's Global Public Art column, Caitlin Bruce discusses her Hemispheric Conversations Urban Art Project, which connects post-industrial cities across the US/Mexico border and offers new ways of producing and engaging graffiti and mural-making.
“It Takes a Village…”: The Use of Childhood to Negotiate Questions of Migration and European Identity in Le Havre
Anushka Robinson
Anushka Robinson explores Aki Kaurismäki's take on migration, Fortress Europe, northern France, and community ties through theories of childhood and affiliation.
An Archive of Shirkers (2018): Collaging Different Theories of the Archive
David Chan
David Chan brings several theories of the archive to bear on the recent documentary Shirkers, asking how the film's openness as a text and mission of collecting a lost film relate to the specificities of place and embodied difference that gave rise to the project.