Urban Ghosts

The free-floating desire spurred by the sight of an alluring stranger, the sense of aloneness in the crowd, the yearning—so often unfulfilled—for the chance encounter that might change everything… These are some of the themes that run through this series of films addressing the bittersweet (and occasionally just bitter) experience of modern urban life as experienced in our haunted cities, places that exist a perpetual state of expansion, self-destruction, and “renewal,” drifting from the decadent 1960s Rome of Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita to the desolate 1980s downtown Manhattan of Jim Jarmusch’s debut Permanent Vacation to the neon-wreathed 1990s Hong Kong of Wong Kar-wai’s Fallen Angels, among many more stopovers. A feast of flâneurie, an extravaganza of ennui.