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The City of the Future revisited or, the lost world of Patrick Keiller
Author(s) -
Clarke David B
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
transactions of the institute of british geographers
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.196
H-Index - 107
eISSN - 1475-5661
pISSN - 0020-2754
DOI - 10.1111/j.1475-5661.2007.00235.x
Subject(s) - narrative , feature film , romance , feature (linguistics) , history , aesthetics , sociology , literature , art , art history , philosophy , movie theater , linguistics
Focusing on Patrick Keiller's 2005 feature‐length film, The City of the Future , this paper revisits the cinematic city. Keiller's film consists entirely of found footage, using intertitles to fashion a unified narrative from separate early actuality films. It involves a fictive journey around Britain, undertaken by an unseen narrator whom, we learn, has travelled back in time to avert an unspecified crisis. Deleterious consequences await Britain's future cities should his mission prove unsuccessful. This narrative device prompts the understanding that the projected crisis has now arrived. Yet by reproducing certain Romantic traits, Keiller risks reinforcing what he seeks to undermine.