A vibrant city and country nestled at the foot of the Malaysian peninsula, Singapore has long been a crossroads, a stopping point and a cultural hub where goods, inventions and ideas are shared and traded. Though Singapore was home to a flourishing Chinese and Malay film industry in the 1950s and 1960s, between independence in 1965 and the early 1990s, few movies were made in Singapore. A new era for cinema in the sovereign city-state started with the international recognition of Eric Khoo’s first features, followed by a New Wave comprised of graduates from local film schools. In recent years the Singapore film industry has produced commercially successful fare, such as the horror movie The Maid, as well as more artistic films like Sandcastle, the first Singaporean film to be selected for International Critic’s Week at Cannes and Ilo Ilo, which won the Caméra d’or at Cannes in 2013. Covering the myths that surround Singaporean film and exploring the realities of the movies that come from this exciting city, World Film Locations: Singapore introduces armchair travellers to a rich, but less known, national cinema

A filmic guidebook of the Greek capital, World Film Locations: Athens takes readers to film locations in the central historical district with excursions to the periphery of Athens – popular neighbourhoods, poor suburbs and slums often represented in postwar neorealist films – and then on to garden cities and upper class suburbs, especially those preferred by the auteurs of the 1970s. Of course, no Grecian vacation would be complete without a visit to the sea, and summer resorts, hotels and beaches near Athens are frequent backdrops for international productions. However, more recent economic strife has emptied city neighbourhoods, created urban violence and caused an increase in riots in the Mediterranean city, and representations of this on film are juxtaposed with images of the eternal and idyllic city. Featuring both Greek and foreign productions from various genres and historical periods, World Film Locations: Athens ultimately works to establish connections between the various aesthetics of dominant representations of Athens.