This textbook offers a critical introduction to the topic of world cinema that explores the transition that has taken place since the 1980s.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

"Loaded with information about the circuits of production and consumption that make up this vast and tangled cultural assemblage, World Cinema: A Critical Introduction deftly maps five prominent nodes of the world cinema network in relation to several significant transnational, regional, and smaller cinematic clusters. Indispensable reading for students of film studies, World Cinema is a rich and engaging introduction to the sphere of world cinema." Carmela Garritano, Associate Professor, Texas A&M University "Shekhar Deshpande and Meta Mazaj's?World Cinema: A Critical Introduction offers an extremely thorough, insightful, and multidimensional analysis of the current state of World Cinema and World Cinema Studies in all their aspects - historical aesthetic, authorial, industrial, and spectatorial. The book constitutes a stupendous achievement -- dense ?well-researched, well-written and replete with mini-essays on a huge variety of subjects." Robert Stam, University Professor, New York University