ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to position the framework of World Cinema with respect to film productions that are not understood as forming a cohesive film industry— despite efforts at organising filmmaking practices— because they are not supported by a strong state. It argues for an epistemology of world cinema that would bypass state powers as the primary lens to read industrial formations, and for a critical study of top-down processes of legitimisation. The chapter focuses on the term "non/industry" to attend to a non-normative definition of film industries that does not rely on the legitimacy of political, economic and diplomatic structures; "non/industry" describes both this indecisive moment that sees the formation of multiple independent groups and enterprises, and the underlying aims of such groups to eventually consolidate a film industry whose future shape is still to be determined. Sometimes, the process of defining Palestinian cinema according to the filmmaker's identity would come in direct tension with the source of funding.
