ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that film studies are in need of a "regional turn" to counterbalance the "transnational turn" of recent years. The term "region" is a recognised administrative term within many nations, and as such is employed to describe the apparatus for stimulating such cinemas employed by a number of governments, such as the UK's former Regional Screen Agencies. The chapter proposes retaining the term "regional cinema" and distinguishing between the "sub-national" and the "supra-national" where necessary. The "degrees of regionality" definition proposed above requires a new, and more nuanced, understanding of the relationship between regional cinema, national and global. An approach based around a "micro-mapping" of cultural and cinematic form would involve either/or: the tracing of the way various global genres, narrative forms, stylistic tropes or iconography are adapted to specific regional context; identification of regionally inflected genres, narrative forms, stylistic tropes or iconography and tracing of their movement through variety of regional, national and global cinematic contexts.
