Prior to tackling the issue of what constituted early Albanian cinema, it is useful to explore the question of just what Albania was in the initial years of the twentieth century. Was it defined by turf or ethnicity? To whom did it belong and who belonged to it? Such questions were probably irrelevant at the time, but nonetheless inform current considerations of national cinemas. The notion of Albania during the infancy of the cinema is, moreover, muddled by an array of interlocking concerns. One might deem Albania a western outpost of the Ottoman Empire and end it at that. Or one might consider the Albania of the League of Prizren, which brought Albanian national interests to the outside world, or of the 1908 Congress of Monastir, which standardized the Albanian alphabet. After 1912, Albania could have referred to the confines of independent Albania or to the broader Albanophone territories. At the time and for the cinema, these issues did not really matter, since film was silent and the universal language of the cinema had not been restricted by words. Later, there was the Albania of the Fascist occupation. Just who was making films and who was viewing them? Such is the puzzle that surrounds the mere notion of an Albanian cinema. Defining Albanian cinema of the early years of the twentieth century would be as tricky as defining the Balkans themselves! And even if we arrive at a definition, there is yet another hindrance.