The City in Film
MIT OpenCourseWare offers this survey course examining urban life through cinema, tracing developments in cities from 1900 to the present. Films serve as primary texts for analyzing technology, bureaucracy, and industrialization, immigration and national identity, race, class, gender and economic inequality, and planning issues like sprawl, displacement, and suburbanization. The course pairs screenings of films set in American and international cities with readings on urban theory and history, asking students to connect cinematic representation to real shifts in urban planning and policy. Materials include a syllabus, film list, and assignments built around close analysis of specific movies and neighborhoods. The course is free to audit through MIT OpenCourseWare, with no certificate offered. It works well for anyone interested in how filmmakers have documented or shaped public perception of urban change over more than a century.