Cinema is often perceived as a metropolitan medium - an entertainment product of the big city and for the big city. Yet film exhibitors have been bringing moving pictures to towns and villages since the early days of itinerant shows. This volume presents for the first time an exploration of the social, cultural and economic dynamics of film culture in the European countryside. Spanning more than a century of film exhibition from the early twentieth-century to the present day, Cinema Beyond the City examines the role that movie-going has played in small-town and rural communities across Europe. It documents an amazing diversity of sites and situations that are relevant for understanding historical and current patterns in film consumption. In chapters written by leading scholars and young academics, interdisciplinary research is used to address key questions about access, economic viability, audience behaviour, film programming and the cultural flows between cities and hinterlands. With its wide range of regional studies and innovative methodological approaches, the collection will be of interest not only to film historians, but also to scholars in the fields of urban history, rural studies and cultural geography.

Fashion Week in Paris and London, the Venice Biennale, and the nineteenth-century Viennese scientific community may seem wildly disparate, but each represent the cultural possibilities of an international metropolis. "Creative Urban Milieus" is an interdisciplinary examination of the historical relationship between culture and the economy in such cities as Berlin, New York, Helsinki, London, Venice, and many others. This groundbreaking work investigates the contributions of the creative class to the urban renaissance, contextualized by historical examples from the eighteenth century to the present day.
Skeptical of the current euphoria surrounding the commercialization of culture, a distinguished group of contributors apply a comparative and historical perspective to probe how creative works have affected the global economy. Drawing on lessons from urban planning, art history, and cultural spectacles alike, "Creative Urban Milieus "will change the way we think about the symbiotic relationship between cities and innovation.