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Film Studies: National Cinemas

This guide highlights selected resources for various national cinemas.

Introduction to transnational and diasporic cinema

Films and cinemas that transcend national boundaries and/or fashion their narrative and aesthetic strategies with reference to more than one national or cultural tradition or community. The idea of the transnational alludes to the forces that link people and institutions across nations: the global circulation of money, commodities, information, and people, for example. Transnational cinema is part of this broader nexus of forces, which take in not only Hollywood's domination of world film markets but also the huge global surge in circulation of films consequent upon the availability delivery technologies such as video and DVD: one of the undoubted consequences of these developments is a rise in cineliteracy among audiences around the the world. The term transnational entered film studies in the mid to late 1990s, having previously enjoyed currency in studies of globalization in mass media and communications. At this point it denoted the internationalization of production capital and audiences across a limited set of national cinemas, namely those of the Chinese nations: Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the People's Republic (see asian epic cinema). ...

Kuhn, A., & Westwell, G. (2012). Transnational cinema. In A Dictionary of Film Studies. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 13 Oct. 2020

Introductory reading(s)

Selected book title(s)

Finding articles and journal titles

You can find articles about transnational cinema in many publications. You can search in an index such as Film & Television Literature Index or FIAF, the International Index to Film Periodicals. You can also search using the box at the top of the page.

Keeping up with Film Studies journal literature

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