ABSTRACT
Since the late 1980s, scholars have become more and more aware that the national cinema paradigm does not adequately respond to contemporary issues in film studies and film practices. Admittedly, even the concept of “national cinema” itself has proven to be far from unproblematic, and many scholars have advocated a shift from national cinema to “the national” of a cinema-a shift that allows for diversity and flexibility rather than unity and fixity, as previously conceived. However, as the forces of transna tion - alism assume increasing magnitude in the era of globalization, the national as a new critical concept continues to be unstable, and its conceptual space is constantly criss-crossed by other discourses and practices variously described as “international,” “multinational,” “postnational,” “para n a - tional” and, last but not least, “transnational.”
