The City of the Future revisited or, the lost world of Patrick Keiller

Abstract

Focusing on Patrick Keiller's 2005 feature-length film, The City of the Future, this paper revisits the cinematic city. Keiller's film consists entirely of found footage, using intertitles to fashion a unified narrative from separate early actuality films. It involves a fictive journey around Britain, undertaken by an unseen narrator whom, we learn, has travelled back in time to avert an unspecified crisis. Deleterious consequences await Britain's future cities should his mission prove unsuccessful. This narrative device prompts the understanding that the projected crisis has now arrived. Yet by reproducing certain Romantic traits, Keiller risks reinforcing what he seeks to undermine. © 2007 The Author. Journal compilation © Royal Geographical Society (with The Institute of British Geographers) 2007.