The construction of urban image is a key strategy for cities to participate in competition and attract resources. As a medium for the dissemination of urban culture, cinema plays an important role in shaping a city’s image. Through its unique artistic techniques, cinema helps counteract the trend of urban “homogenization” in the context of globalization. China’s vast territory, abundant resources, and rich regional diversity provide fertile material for cinematic creation. At the same time, by showcasing a city’s character and exploring its cultural significance, cinema can assist cities identify their own pathways to urban image building.

Urban landscape: The material dimension of urban landscape primarily includes architecture, streets, tourist attractions, and natural features. A common approach to urban image building is to identify and refine representative visual symbols. However, relying solely on external symbols can easily result in visual and creative homogenization. Cinema, by contrast, can present a city’s ordinary natural and cultural landscapes while simultaneously exploring distinctive, highly recognizable scenes. For example, Her Story (2024) was filmed at over 20 locations across Shanghai and incorporated more than 50 sites within the city, making the city itself an integral component of the story. Such use of urban landscape not only facilitates narrative development but also enables the audience to rediscover and remember a city.

Urban character: Shaping urban image through cinema is a gradual and in-depth process. In addition to depicting a city’s outward appearance, filmmakers must explore its unique characteristics and highlight its distinct spirit. For instance, Tale of the Night (2023) does not focus heavily on Changsha’s well-known landmarks. Instead, it leverages cultural symbols such as food, dialects, and nightlife to present the vibrant everyday life of the city, allowing the audience to experience its lively, relaxed, and inclusive atmosphere. Urban image in cinema should transcend a city’s real-world charm to deepen the audience’s perception and imagination of it.

Urban population: Today, an increasing number of filmmakers are shifting their focus from a broad, macro depiction of cities to more nuanced and in-depth portrayals. By depicting the relationships and emotional bonds between characters and focusing on the daily lives of ordinary people, films can present rich, diverse urban stories and emotions, thereby revealing a city’s multifaceted nature. In Chongqing Hot Pot (2016), for example, the characters are straightforward, fiery, and generous, embodying distinctive regional traits. Their interactions drive the storyline, and their personalities reflect the city’s humanistic charm.

Urban memory: As the accumulation of a city’s history and culture in the collective mind, urban memory constitutes its spiritual wealth. By employing shifts in time and space, films can interweave a city’s history with modernity, reality with imagination. For instance, Chongqing, known as “Fog City” and “Mountain City,” offers natural geographical advantages for filmmaking and content creation, giving rise to evocative and appealing labels such as “layered space” and “mysterious locales.” Similarly, City of Life and Death (2009), which depicts the historical event of the Nanjing Massacre, allows the audience not only to grasp the gravity and brutality of this historical event but also to gain a deeper understanding of the city itself. With the continuous development and innovation of cinematic art, films are expected to play an even more vital role in the construction and dissemination of urban images.

She Qilin is from the School of Film, Television, and Communication at Xiamen University of Technology.