Reframing Diaspora Cinema: Towards a Theoretical Framework

Abstract

This article reviews how the concept of “diaspora cinema” has featured in academic discourses over the past thirty years, examining its underpinning paradigms. In the wake of a transnational and postcolonial shift within film studies, “diaspora cinema” has been increasingly understood in its imbrication with Third Cinema, postcolonial cinema, transnational cinema, accented cinema, intercultural cinema, cinema of transvergence, etc. While critically mapping out these descriptive conceptualisations and models, this article advances an understanding of “diaspora cinema” as an instrumental framework to grasp how diaspora identities, cultures, and spaces are discursively co-constructed through cinematic practices, rather than as a cinematic category per se.