Redeveloping the City, Redeveloping the Cinema: Film and Urban Culture at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century

My dissertation investigates the relationship between the city and cinema in contemporary North America. I contend that dramatic changes to the urban way of life at the turn of the twenty-first century have redefined our historical understanding of that relationship; while the film industry struggled to adopt new strategies of production and exhibition for reaching urban niche audiences, cities rushed to embrace media and other cultural industries as a potential engine for development in a post-industrial economy. I pursue this argument across three case studies: in the first, I examine the impact of urban gentrification on the film industry, where I find that the elevated prominence of the "indie film" over the last twenty years occurs alongside the rise of new taste publics that form as a result of urban gentrification. In the second, I explore the rise of an alternative exhibition circuit for black film in the United States during the 1990s and 2000s, arguing that this new circuit has helped to redefine the audience for African-American popular cinema during this time period. In the last, I examine the rise of culture-led urban redevelopment plans, and specifically focus on the city of Toronto's efforts to encourage development via civic investment in the cinema. Throughout, I rely on a mixed-methods approach that draws equally from cinema and media studies, cultural geography, urban studies, and sociology.