These are two VERY different films, so try to contrast them as well. How are the depictions of these two cities different?

WATCH: both attached to files****
1. Man with a Movie Camera
2. The Lego Movie

This week’s discussion focuses on taking Harvey’s notions of the city–and his ways of analyzing the city–and applying them to TWO FILM CLIPS. I want you to particularly focus on his idea of THINGS vs PROCESSES, and that idea of thinking of CITIES as ‘ecological,’ as spaces of relationships between humans and their space. I think the idea of ‘community’ might spark some interesting discussions here.

IF YOU HAVE NOT seen the Harvey wrap up video, make sure you see it BEFORE you do this discussion!! I created that video thinking of this discussion. . .

Both clips are about a ‘city’ waking up! ☀️

One of them you might have seen before, it’s from the hilarious and super intelligent film The Lego Movie. The other is from an older film–a silent film!–called Man with a Movie Camera, made in the 1920s in the then-called Soviet Union. Man with a Movie Camera was part of a genre of sorts that was called the ‘city film’, slightly experimental cinema done all over Europe that made a ‘portrait’ of a city. . . One fun fact about this film is that Dziga Vertov, and Elizaveta Svilova, the director and editor team, made a ‘composite’ city: what you see is a combinations of several Soviet cities! Moscow, Kiev, Leningrad, etc….

We are still starting this class, so I am curious about your finding connections between the representations of the urban in these two films and how Harvey could help us understand those images better!

These are two VERY different films, so try to contrast them as well. How are the depictions of these two cities different?

IMPORTANT NOTE: Make sure you only talk about the scenes that I have selected–if you have seen The Lego Movie or Man with a Movie Camera before only limit yourself to our clips here!

ALSO!, don’t forget that The Lego Movie is a COMEDY! So there is a little bit of satire (or perhaps quite a bit of satire) in the way that the film depicts the city……

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