ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses a set of films that visualise composite mediated/material space using the model of the city. The chapter argues that the examples discussed invoke various mediated modes of organising, representing, and perceiving urban space and layer these mediated modes over concrete on-screen city spaces in the same way that mobile digital media, smart cities, and geo tagging technologies allow for the layering of various modes of mediated perception within material space. In this sense, modes for imagining and perceiving space unite with the “ground-level” view of space. The chapter analyses the construction of Berlin as a video game in Lola rennt (Run Lola Run, Tykwer, 1998); cinematic Paris in Holy Motors (Carax, 2012); Naples imagined as if it were a reality television set in Reality (Garrone, 2012); and Los Angeles as mapped and navigated via Google Earth in The Bling Ring (Coppola, 2013). Importantly, each film explores the performative transmutation of the physical bodies and identities of the characters who inhabit such composite, layered spaces.
