ABSTRACT
World cinema remains a key category in film studies and film culture, appropriately for the medium that helped define twentieth century global modernity. At the turn of the millennium, a renewed emphasis on defining and studying world cinema responded to new forms of economic and cultural globalization, as well as to the accelerated and dispersed adoption of media technologies that altered modes and flows of cinematic production, distribution, exhibition, and display. Within the context of these changes, cinema remains relevant as an object of study, distinct medium, and social technology due, on the one hand, to Hollywood’s continued market expansion and, on the other, to its function within an economy of prestige linked to a vital global film festival network (English 2005). No longer dominated by European art cinema, but comprising work from Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East, as well as North American independent cinemas, sub-national and transnational formations, and so on, world cinema offers a cosmopolitan cultural antidote to still-prevalent global conflicts and uneven economic relations.
