Global Circulations of Film Theory
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Published 31 October 2026
About this book
Rethinks the place of film theory in a global context
- Reshapes understandings of what film theory is
- Draws together film scholars from around the world to develop new conceptualisations of film theory that seek to decolonise the field
- Case studies include examples of film theory from the Philippines, Poland, South Korea, Morocco, Japan, Nigeria and Brazil
Aligned with the decolonising impulse of scholarship in area studies that has challenged the view that film theory emanates from the West to the rest of the world, this volume nonetheless develops in a new and properly global direction a field that is still largely nationally and regionally bounded.
Positing film theory as global, multiple and coeval, contributors consider how film theory is generated and circulates within and between different international locales from the 1910s to the present.
The book envisages alternative archaeologies, genealogies and geographies of theory, charting its existence not only in different writings but also through exchanges and encounters across divergent sites and practices. By broadening the study and understanding of where and how film theory materialises, the collection interrogates afresh what film theory is.
In so doing, Global Circulations of Film Theory presents the most extensive exploration to date of film theory in a global frame.
Reviews
"Accounts of film theory—its canons, definitions, histories, and locations—have long reproduced imperialist narratives and hierarchies. Bringing together an international network of researchers, this indispensable volume offers a much-needed reconsideration within a global and decolonial framework. Unprecedented in geohistorical scope, it is an essential resource for the field."
Table of contents
Acknowledgements
List of Contributors
Introduction
Sarah Cooper
Part I. Sites and Circulations of Early Film Theory
1. ‘An Archaeology of Early Philippine Film Writings’
Louise Jashil R. Sonido
2. ‘START Film Society: Cinephile Culture, Film Theory and Political Activism in 1930s Poland’
Łukasz Biskupski
3. ‘Towards a Socialist Gaze: Theorising the Spectator in the Early Soviet Union’
Emma Widdis
4. ‘Misremembering Hebrew Film Theory: The Circulation of Film Discourse in Mandatory Palestine and Israel in its First Decades’
Boaz Hagin
5. ‘Translating Pudovkin or How an Indian Actor Prepares: An Interpretive, Performative and Literary Approach’
Sarah R. Niazi
Part II. Third Cinema and Beyond: Translating, Decolonising, Reworlding
6. ‘Tracing African Archaeologies, Manifestations of, and Contributions to, Third Cinema Ecologies’
Aboubakar Sanogo
7. ‘Translating Third Cinema in Cold War South Korea’
Hieyoon Kim
8. ‘Decolonising Co-authorship at the Interstices of Third and Fourth Cinema: Amussu’
Will Higbee
9. ‘Reworlding Third Cinema’
Masha Salazkina
Part III. From Decolonising Theory to Global Circuits of Critical Coalition
10. ‘Decolonisation and Asia as Problematics’
Victor Fan
11. ‘Decolonising the Seventh Art’
Ahmed Bedjaoui
12. ‘A Carrier Bag Theory of Cinema’
So Mayer
13. ‘Dis/obedience: Sumud, Survivance and Theorising (Native American and Palestinian) Film with Decoloniality’
Michele Aaron
Part IV. Theorising through Film and Other Media Objects
14. ‘Thinking Through Film': Ritwik Ghatak’s Cinematic Practice
Manishita Dass
15. ‘Speculative Inventions of Southeast Asian Cinemas: Theorising through Practice'
Elizabeth Wijaya
16. ‘Screenlife Films: Theorising Moving Images through Intermedial Encounters of (Post-colonial) Bodies’
Izabella Füzi
17. ‘From the South: A Relational Approach to Global Circulations of Film Theory through Film, Television and Digital Media in Brazil’
Esther Hamburger
Part V. New Genealogies and Sites of Theory: Between the Global North and Global South
18. The Origins of the International Association of Documentary Filmmakers: Where the Traditions and Theories of Documentary Film Intersect with the Rise of Direct Cinema and Cinéma Vérité’
Mariano Mestman
19. ‘From Revolutionary to Co-Evolutionary Cinema: Film Theory in 1980s Nigeria and the Rise of Nollywood’
Vinzenz Hediger
20. ‘Nativising the Electric Shadow: The Genealogy of a Chinese Media Concept’
Hongwei Thorn Chen
21. ‘Politics of Bracketing: Matsumoto Toshio, Merleau-Ponty and Phenomenological Film Theory’
Naoki Yamamoto