Exploration of the geopolitics of situatedness and distance as they refer to the film industry, investigating processes of production, distribution, and reception of Hollywood, Third World, and diasporic films, and studying classical and artisanal modes of production in film. Addresses questions of authorship and embodiment; human rights and interventionist filmmaking as they refer themselves to human states of liminality, global movements of populations and capital. Traces the experience of globalization, urbanization, alienation, violence, nostalgia for nature and homeland as represented in the filmic image.