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Many movies include city names in their titles. The gesture of declaring an identity between the film and the city not only grounds the film but also shackles it to its location. Understanding the film, it is implied, requires intimate knowledge of the locales it describes. A symbiosis emerges in which the film and the city market each other.The touristy pitch in films such as Roman Holiday (1953) has been further accentuated since the rise of branding as an advertisement strategy in the 1990s.The city itself has become a brand name, promoted by a skyline that functions as its logo.The brand-name city is recognizable by architectural landmarks of an international lifestyle — the airport, the elevated highway, theTV tower. It is therefore apt that films such as Home Sweet Home (in its Chinese title, My Home Is inTaipei, dir. Bai Jingrui, 1970) and Twenty-SomethingTaipei (dir. Leon Dai, 2002) start with the protagonists’ arrival at the airport by international flights.The city is its airport.Taipei, INTERLUDE 4 In the Name of the City Yomi Braester Fig. iv.1 Twenty-Something Taipei (Leon Dai, 2002) 152 Interlude 4 the film intimates already in its title and beginning sequence, is ready for the consumption of the youthful jet set. Other films use the city name to challenge its mystique and glamor. Beijing Bastards (dir. ZhangYuan, 1991) promises already in its title a city on the verge of social breakdown. The film constructs a new urban cool, that of the rock ’n’ roll counterculture. I Love Beijing (dir. Ning Ying, 2000) deploys its title tongue in cheek. Censors have in fact detected the irony and changed the Chinese title to the insipid The Summer Sun Is Warm.The censors asked Ning Ying with dismay:Why does the film start with a traffic jam? Why is a military truck in the traffic? The official line cannot accommodate the daily and the random in urban life. Beijing, in this view, must be not only represented but also representative. Unless the city is reduced to a slogan, in the censors’ mind the city should exist neither in the film’s title nor in visual footage. Fig. iv.2 I Love Beijing (NingYing, 2000) ...

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