Global London on Screen

Global London on screen presents a mélange of films by directors from the Global South and North, portraying everyday life to the more fantastical, odious or extraordinary circumstances that are captured cinematically in this superdiverse city. Globalisation is often depicted as a threat to ordinary citizens and a destroyer of cities. This volume challenges such a simplistic view, exploring a wealth of cinematic depictions in order to offer a nuanced picture of life in global London.Analysing the city’s cosmopolitan high points, as well as its more troubling migratory histories, exclusionist enclaves and brushes with crime, the book takes in various iconic and less-seen neighbourhoods and cultures. The films covered here present a number of tropes and periods. There are noir films by émigré directors and art films documenting the 1960s and 1970s. There are radical Black British visions of the 1980s and grungy Scandinavian takes from the 1990s. Representing the 2000s and beyond are a new cross-cultural, multi-ethnic set of films from East and South Asia, Africa and Latin America, alongside Hollywood blockbusters that make dramatic use of this iconic mega-city.Showcasing a remarkable array of filmmakers, Global London on screen reveals how they destabilise conceptions of English or British non-global London, challenging universalist preconceptions about the world’s most famous city. Global London on screen presents a mélange of films by directors from the Global South and North, portraying everyday life to the more fantastical, odious, or extraordinary in terms of circumstances as captured cinematically in this superdiverse city. This book portrays a segment of such superdiversity by historicising and theorising various cinematic reproductions of London by filmmakers coming to this megacity from abroad. As visitors, cosmopolitans, or even migrant filmmakers, their treatment of London’s zonal locations as both foreign and familiar is fascinating; their narratives and visualisations of London’s spatial and architectural uniqueness is given a sojourners’ touch; while other foreign filmmakers showcase and sometimes problematise London’s socio-cultural globality and locality as both British and a city open (and sometimes closed off) to the world.