ABSTRACT
This chapter explores what it might mean to talk about "transworld cinemas". The history of Film Studies contains standout examples of what might be considered transworld taxonomising, even if their emphasis has often been primarily European in the kinds of films explored. To think of cinemas in a transworld fashion reflects greatly on cinema's global distribution, and the ways in which we tap into it. The geopolitics of film production and distribution, then, are determining of our ability to make connections transworld, whether we view films in multiplexes, or independent cinemas programming from the festival circuit, on the festival circuit itself, as DVDs, on the internet, or across a variety of such distribution platforms. To remap a world of cinemas requires a transworld view of films in relation to world historical events, the methodological tools for this new historiography being those of the world's philosophies.
