Introduction: transnationalism and cinema, crisscross parallels

Transnationalism as a research field is highly transdisciplinary; it has been mainly developed in university departments of Migration Studies, Anthropology, Sociology, Political Science, Geography, International Relations, History, Cultural Studies and Film Studies. Consequently, although the theoretical foundations of the term have been primarily related to the dynamics of migration, the meaning of transnationalism is nowadays extremely loose. Initially the term was concomitant with the transnational movement of bodies; however, communication and technological development such as the Internet and the World Wide Web have propelled multivalent forms of interconnectedness across national borders, giving rise to a transnational virtual mobility. Cinema has naturally been absorbed by the macro- and micro-dynamics of the migration processes and it has consequently enticed the emergence of new narratives and collaborative forms of production. Transnational cinemas is one of the emergent fields of research within Film Studies which has devoted attention to the study of, particularly, film collaborations across borders. In order to grasp the conceptual permutations that transationalism has been subjected to, this chapter will briefly outline the genesis of the term and its fluctuating historiography, including Film Studies approaches to it. Furthermore, one of the contributions of this chapter to the literature on transnational cinemas is the opportunity it presents to reify the interconnectedness of transnationalism, as used in Film Studies, to its roots in Migration Studies, Anthropology and Sociology.