National cinema

[1] To define a national cinema, some scholars emphasize the structure of the film industry and the roles played by "...market forces, government support, and cultural transfers..."[2] More theoretically, national cinema can refer to a large group of films, or "a body of textuality... given historical weight through common intertextual 'symptoms', or coherencies".

Scott MacKenzie argues that by the late 1990s, if Canada did have a popular cinema with both avant-garde and experimental elements, that was influenced by European filmmakers such as Jean-Luc Godard and Wim Wenders.

MacKenzie argues that Canadian cinema has a "...self-conscious concern with the incorporation of cinematic and televisual images", and as examples, he cites films such as David Cronenberg's Videodrome (1983), Atom Egoyan's Family Viewing (1987), Robert Lepage's The Confessional (Le Confessionnal) (1995) and Srinivas Krishna's Masala (1991).

The 1990s and 2000s "postmodern cinema" of France includes filmmakers such as Jean-Jacques Beinex, Luc Besson and Coline Serreau.

During the 1920s and early 1930s, German national cinema was known for the progressive and artistic approaches to filmmaking with "shifted conventional cinematic vocabulary" and which gave actresses a much larger range of character-types.

Some East German films examined Germany's Nazi past, such as Wolfgang Staudte's Die Mörder sind unter uns (The Murderers Are Among Us).

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Wajda, Krzysztof Zanussi and Barbara Sass made influential films which garnered interest outside of Poland.

[8] There was a high interest in topicality in and capturing current events as they unfolded, re-staging, or combining both approaching, created a sensationalist appeal in these visual 'records' of death and injury.

Later narrativized dramas, such as María Candelaria, The Pearl, Enamorada, Rio Escondido, Saián Mexico, or Pueblerina by Emilio Fernandez and/or Gabriel Figueroa, are often considered part of the Mexican national cinematic body.

But also, is noted to have incorporated visual folkloric style of José Guadalupe Posada, the deconstructing landscapes of Gerardo Murillo, and the low angles, deep focus, diagonal lines, and 'native' imagery in Sergei Eisenstein's Que Viva Mexico.

Modern genres embraced and nurtured as 'Mexican national cinema' are often those of the social and family melodrama genre (the Golden Globe nominated Como agua para chocolate (1991) by Alfonso Arau),[9] the working class melodrama (Danzon (1991) by Maria Novaro), the comedy (Sólo con tu pareja (1991) by Alfonso Cuarón) and the rural costumbrismo film (La mujer de Benjamin (1990) by Carlos Carrera).

Up to 60% of financial assistance for national, Latin American, and European productions were provided by the Instituto Mexicano de Cinematografia, new models of co-production were created, and distribution and sales channels were opened abroad.