| Current research | |
I am currently finishing a research monograph, entitled The Real Los Angeles: Hollywood, Cinema, and the City of Angels, which will be published by Reaktion Books, London and Chicago, in 2010. In this work, I examine the history of the relationship between Hollywood, cinema and Los Angeles from the 1900s to the 1950s. I do this through a focus on the city's representation in films as utopia and dystopia, from Thomas Edison actuality films of Los Angeles to slapstick comedy and from movies about the movies at the height of the studio system to film noir as it declined. Throughout the book, I relate the city's cinematic image to the crucial economic, political, and social role of the film industry in the life and evolution of Los Angeles from desert backwater in the nineteenth century to twentieth- and twenty-first century megalopolis. I am in the process of editing a collection of new essays, entitled Architectures of Revolt, on the conjuncture between cinema, cities, and political protest in 1968. My next research monograph will be a study of the representation of urban and rural space in American cinema from 1968 to 1974, centered mainly on the road movie. |
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