Proposed Panel: Cinescapes: Traversing the Onscreen City Organizer Name: Gloria Monti Radio-TV-Film Cal State University Fullerton E-Mail Address: [log in to unmask] Summary A significant body of scholarly work analyzes filmic representations of the city: The Cinematic City (1997), Cinema and the City: Film and Urban Societies in a Global Context (2001), Screening the City (2003), From Moscow to Madrid: Postmodern Cities, European Cinema (2003), Cinematic Urbanism: A History of the Modern from Reel to Real (2006). This panel seeks to explore a specific aspect of this urban-cinematic relationship by examining the work of a number of actors whose personae embody the idea of a particular city. For example, Woody Allen, Spike Lee and New York, Anna Magnani, Nanni Moretti, and Rome, Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky saga and Philadelphia, the New Wave actors and Paris, but also the Frankie Avalon-Annette Funicello duo and Malibu. A symbiotic relationship is established between character and city by way of the actor’s travels all over town: Stallone’s Rocky running-training regimen through Philadelphia, Magnani’s Mamma Roma endlessly wandering through Rome in search of social betterment, Jean-Paul Belmondo’s Michel Poiccard driving stolen cars around Paris, and Moretti musing while riding on his vespa in the deserted streets of Rome. These defining roles, in turn, exceed the space of the stories they tell and transform actors into icons of “their” cities: Magnani’s Mamma Roma in Pasolini’s film is Pina from Rossellini’s Open City, twenty years later. Allen is New York, from film to film. Papers are sought that explore the relationship between an actor and a city via the character they play. Send abstracts and a CV by 1 August via e-mail. -- gloria monti, ph.d. assistant professor radio-TV-film CSUF, fullerton, CA [log in to unmask] "there are no facts, only interpretations." friedrich nietzsche ________________________________ ---- Learn to speak like a film/TV professor! Listen to the ScreenLex podcast: http://www.screenlex.org