Film and Urbanism

Gihan Karunaratne is an architect and academic whose work critically engages with current questions in architecture, urbanism, and spatial practice. Informed by extensive experience in both teaching and professional practice, his approach operates at the intersection of design inquiry, urban theory, and socio-spatial research. His academic trajectory reflects a sustained commitment to examining the dynamic, evolving nature of urban environments, particularly in contexts shaped by ongoing physical, economic, and social transformation. Karunaratne’s research interrogates the complex processes through which urban change unfolds, and the ways these transformations intersect with the everyday lived experiences of marginalised communities. His work foregrounds often overlooked dimensions of urban life, the “underbelly” of cities, by drawing critical attention to informal settlements and conditions of precarity. Through this lens, he engages with questions of resilience, spatial justice, and the adaptive practices that emerge in uncertain, rapidly shifting urban contexts. A significant dimension of his research focuses on cities in the Global South, where rapid urbanisation, socio-economic inequality, and displacement generate distinctive spatial conditions. Within this framework, informal urbanism is understood not as a deficit, but as a complex terrain of social and spatial negotiation. His publications contribute to interdisciplinary debates on urban transformation, informality, and spatial justice, advancing critical perspectives on architecture, resilience, and the politics of urban space.

• Introduction (Gihan Karunaratne) SECTION 1: Space of Flows and Geopolitics of the Personal 1. Should the Wind Drop: Itineraries of the Non-Place (Floris Paalman and Jiamai Chen) 2. Dancing through Berlin: Historical and Urban Layers in “Oh Boy" (Andreas Hamburger and Veronika Heller) 3. Bit-Part to Beating Heart: Mapping Trans Geographies on Screen (Gem Barton and Gaetano Drago) SECTION 2:Luminous Geographies of Inequalities and Redemption 4. All we imagine as light: The Plight of the Temporary Migrant Workers of Colombo (Gihan Karunaratne, Jagath Munasinghe and Nusrat Jahan Mim) 5. Framing the Analogistic Clutter: Towards a Warburgian Cinematic Atlas of Tehran and Mumbai (Hamideh Farahmandian, Ronita Bardhan and François Penz) 6. Cinematic Informality: Migrant Urban Life Between Representation and Lived Space (Abel Mavura and Felipe Hernandez) 7. The Harder They Come: Narratives of Resilience and Redemption in Urban Jamaica (David Howard) SECTION 3: Lenses of Recognition, Exposure and Consequence 8. Projected Cities and Cinematic Futures: Urban Imaginaries, Post-Urbanism, and the Architecture of Film (Tigran Haas) 9. The light-hearted spirit of Jean Rouch’s approach to the city (Alvaro Velasco Perez) 10. War-ravaged cities—(not) a movie set (Fabienne Hoelzel) SECTION 4: Cine-sites of Traits, Debts, Narratives and Identities 11. Film-Making and Urban Identity Formation: In Creating the Place of Significance in Mind (Ali Cheshmehzangi) 12. The Great Cities of Becoming from Literary New York to Cinematic Berlin (Gul Kacmaz Erk) 13. Spatializing debt: Film narratives as Project hypotheses (Antonio Di Campli) SECTION 5: Liminal Pedagogies and Lifecycles of Film-City-making 14. When The City Teaches the Camera (Klearjos Eduardo Papanicolaou and Michael Walczak) 15. The Camera Room: Filmmaking as Spatial Practice (Clara Kraft Isono) 16. It’s About Time: The Architectural Essay Film as a Pedagogical Tool (Penelope Haralambidou) SECTION 6: Filmic Bodies, Displaced Matter and Sensorial Environments 17. Cities of Pores and Holes: Displaced Waters in the Migratory Cinemas of East and Southeast Asia (Doreen Bernath) 18. Nostalgia, Scentscapes, and Urban Resilience: Cinematic Explorations of Memory in the City (Azadeh Fatehrad) 19. From the Sea to the Square: Filming the improvised choreography of a drawing (Angeliki Sakellariou) 20. Materials at the Edge: Framing Identity in Film and Urban Interiors (Tania Lopez-Winkler)