Overview

Film offers a powerful witness to the historical effects of segregation. Twentieth-century American urban policy favored ""white flight"" to the suburbs while confining other racial and ethnic groups in urban cores. Mainstream cinema, in turn, perpetuated racial stereotypes that justified this confinement. Amy Murphy revisits this history via six independent films, each mapping a distinct urban geography at a particular moment in the century. Murphy's analysis reveals that certain veins of postwar independent filmmaking grew out of specific policy failures of the American city. With increased access to media production, such filmmakers created new cinemas from within the segregated city that expanded avenues for self-representation. Informed and insightful, The Divided City and Its New Cinemas, 1920–1980 examines how often-raw independent films pioneered cinematic exploration of identities impacted by space and time, and by geography and history.

Full Product Details

Author:   Amy Murphy
Publisher:   University of Illinois Press
Imprint:   University of Illinois Press
Weight:   0.481kg
ISBN:  

9780252089367

ISBN 10:   0252089367
Pages:   296
Publication Date:   31 March 2026
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Forthcoming
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments Introduction 1 Ch 1: The City as Subject (Manhatta, 1921) 20 Ch 2: From City Symphonies to Suburban Citadels (The City, 1939) 59 Ch 3: Inventing the ""Slum"" and the New Downtown (The Exiles, 1961) 96 Ch 4: Life in the Hypersegregated Ghetto (Killer of Sheep, 1977) 136 Ch 5: The Barrio and the Bilingual City (Please, Don't Bury Me Alive!, 1976) 175 Ch 6: Fugitive Identity and the Transnational Enclave (Chan is Missing, 1982) 212 Afterword 252 Notes Appendix: Maps of Six Key Geographies Index

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Author Information

Amy Murphy is a professor of architecture at the University of Southern California.

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