“Una ciutat, un film” (One city, one film), in the Filmoteca

Images of cities such as Barcelona, New York, Paris, Tokyo and Lisbon form part of the popular iconography of the history of film. During the month of August, under the title Una ciutat, un film, the Filmoteca de Catalunya is offering a series of films in which the aforementioned cities, as well as others, form part of the premises of films by renowned directors such as Billy Wilder, Blake Edwards, Yasujirô Ozu and Alain Tanner.

 

Some of these directors are more than familiar with the cities where they have filmed their stories, as is the case, for example, with Japanese director Yasujirô Ozu and his masterpiece, Tokyo Story, or the Swedish film maker Ingmar Bergman and his portrayal of Stockholm in Summer with Monica.

 

Other directors have chosen to assume the role of accidental tourists in cities that are not their homes, such as the North American director Jules Dassin, who filmed the thriller Night and the City in London in 1950, while escaping from McCarthyism, Billy Wilder and his sarcastic, ironic portrayal of the Cold War from the city of Berlin, in One, Two, Three, or Swiss director Alain Tanner, who filmed In the White City in Lisbon.

 

In Bruges (Bruges, Martin McDonagh), Our Lady of the Assassins (Medellin, Barbet Schroeder) and Never on Sunday (Piraeus, Jules Dassin) are the other films which have yet to be shown in this series, which has already seen the screening of The Belly of an Architect (Rome, Peter Greenaway), In The City (Barcelona, Cesc Gay), Rendezvous de Juillet (Paris, Jacques Becker) and the iconic Breakfast at Tiffany’s (New York, Blake Edwards).