Abstract:

 The reconceptualization of world cinema and Chinese cinema could be described from the following several aspects: First, a parallel development of world literature, which is equally imbricated in debates concerning center and periphery or dominance and resistance as world cinema does. Second, some proposed new ways of viewing world cinema and foregrounding polylocal positions and shifting perspectives in a way that privileges a set of conjunctures with multiple entry points rather than a structure within a rigid system. Third, current debates on Sinophone cinema in English scholarship and rewriting film history in Chinese scholarship as two new contenders in the geocultural politics of film studies, and I question the persistent, yet unproductive reliance on binarism in both cases. Finally, an emphasis on Chinese cinema as translocal practice and on the polycentric view of world cinema, likewise upheld in world literature, as a necessarily openended project demanding further investigation.
 

Key words: geocultural politics, translocal practice, shifting perspectives, world cinema and Chinese cinema