ABSTRACT
At the start of the new millennium, the publication of another volume on national cinema may seem ironic for several reasons. First, in the age of globalization, operations of multinational corporations have increasingly criss-crossed and sometimes entirely obscured or bypassed national borders, while local, regional and transnational forces continue to undermine the legitimacy of any nationstate (Miyoshi 1993). Second, in response to the sweeping power of the ‘global popular’ (During 1997), media and cultural studies have looked to postcoloniality, postmodernity and transnationality for new conceptual frameworks, and any focus on a single national cinema appears rather narrow or even dated. Third, in the wake of new technological development, cinema itself is said to have entered its ‘late’ stage, and the current academic interest in early cinema and late cinema thus place in an unfavorable light a project that considers the entire history of a national cinema.
