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City-in-Film: The Mobilities’ Perspective. Les Roberts, Film, Mobility and Urban Space: A Cinematic Geography of Liverpool
Les Roberts’ objective in Film, Mobility and Urban Space is to describe cinematic representations of Liverpool that result from the diversity of mobilities that form its cultural and spatial image. One may find two different interpretations for “mobility” in the book. The first one deals with “the ways in which film is located and embedded in the historical geography of the city” (6), and it therefore gives an overview of cinematic representations of mobility sites in the city (e.g. Liverpool Inner Motorway). The second interpretation explores “how ideas of the ‘city-in-film’ inform the wider geographical imagination of cities” (6) and refers to mobility inspired by cinematic images (e.g. tourism). This twofold interpretation allows Roberts to work on both cinematic and spatial geographies of the city, but at the same time to claim theoretical and methodological insights. It is the latter that I would like to outline in this review.