Transnational cinemas: mapping a field of study

This chapter aims to present an overview of the history of the transnational in film studies, and consider the ways in which the discipline has responded to developments in the social sciences following a transnational momentum in film studies from 2005, with the following years seeing a number of conceptual and theoretical essays and edited volumes and the founding of a journal, Transnational Cinemas in 2010. It outlines the key areas of focus in the first phase of transnational cinema studies: migration and cinema and exilic and diasporic filmmaking; transnationalising readings of national and regional cinema; historical readings of transnational cinema; and film festival studies. Following this, the chapter discusses approaches to transnational film theory through an analysis of a selection of definitional essays on the subject. The final section of the chapter presents an overview of the second phase of transnational film studies, and considers the expanded reach of the transnational to the many fields that make up the discipline.