Cinema, radio, television, video, the Internet, and other visual mass media have found niches in the dense creativity of twentieth‐century urban life, altering social practices and cultural encounters worldwide. Yet, without cities where producers and audiences have congregated, mass production, texts, distribution, and reception lack human foundations. This symbiosis demands careful ethnographic analysis of media within concrete urban histories. We illustrate this approach from work with film and viewership in two cities. Hong Kong has gained global fame for its films, often scrutinized for clues to its identity; we examine how moviegoing itself and the contexts of transnational spectatorship define a changing city. Philadelphia, by contrast, has rarely controlled its film images; here, it is useful to contrast the production and reading of visual images about the city with images produced through narrowcast media that speak to urban social issues. In both cases, urban visual cultures highlight contestation and creativity in local and global frameworks, [film, grassroots media, urban imagery, Hong Kong, Philadelphia]
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