ABSTRACT
Globalization “denotes the processes through which sovereign national actors are criss-crossed and undermined by transnational actors with varying prospects for power, orientations, identities, and networks” (Beck 2000b: 11). Increasingly the movement around the globe of capital and products is enabled so that cultural products are available in countries other than their nation of origin (Short and Kim 3). John Rennie Short and Yeong-Hyun Kim differentiate between economic globalization, cultural globalization, and political globalization, but maintain that globalization’s greatest effect is in the sphere of finance (3-4). The power of the nation-state has been weakened, and market-driven agents compete with national governments in the processes of transnational trade. Short and Kim correctly observe that the analysis of globalization has focused on economics and that issues of global culture have been subordinated to discussions about economic and social processes of globalization. Global cinema relies on multinational funding, production, and distribution, in contrast to national cinema, where national funding, national culture, and a national audience were in place and taken for granted. Paradoxically, it is the development of globalization that has led to a more thorough interest in the conditions of national cinema.
