National Cinema: An Anachronistic Delirium?

The notion of National Cinema has been under fierce attack. It was once a dominant paradigm during the heyday of the nation-state but now is a marker of obsolescence. In this essay I first critique those who forsake the concept of National Cinema by examining the following questions: Is National Cinema a conceptual and institutional by-product of Hollywood domination? How is National Cinema correlated with cultural identity and uniqueness? Should National Cinema be supplanted by a fashionable neologism, transnational cinema? I argue that National Cinema has lasting significance as a concept and needs to be retooled as an analytic paradigm for cultural self-making/becoming, which involves institutional, economic, and discursive negotiations/struggles to determine what has to be done to afford cinematic cultures critical to socio-cultural life in a national society.