The very title of this research project and the summary of its theoretical and methodological aspirations entail a rather paradoxical and productive nexus. Should the efforts to look beyond the label ‘national cinema’ be pursued under a designation (‘paranational cinema’) with a similar overarching tone? To avoid precisely this pitfall, one should prefer to speak of ‘paranational in cinema.’ ‘Paranational’ ought not to be an all-encompassing term: instead of subsuming or overshadowing through homogenization, ‘paranational’ emerges, transpires, and occurs ‘from the bottom up.’ These efforts should thus be concentrated not on imposing definitions ‘from above,’ but on recognizing ‘paranational’ instances in cinema and on bringing them to the surface, through informed observation, meticulous description, and/or contextualized analysis. The unsystematic nature of these occurrences does call for a fairly fluid framework, yet such a framework could run the risk of being too vague. Initial points of reference – which will be detailed below – seem necessary for an in-depth exploration of these matters.

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The prefix ‘para-’ comes from the Ancient Greek παρά (pará, “beside; next to, near, from; against, contrary to”). Its meaning in English encompasses, among others: parallel (beside, alongside), adjacent to, opposite of, across, beyond, unrecognized, unsanctioned, avoidant. In these prepositional and exclusionary functions, ‘para-’ indicates an aberrant relation within a wider normative context. Added to the adjective ‘national,’ ‘para-’ can help to describe and interpret practices, modes of existence, or attitudes which are beside, transversal or in opposition to constituent norms of a nation or a nation-state. These aberrations can be actively chosen or ascribed by external powers. Hence, ‘paranational’ can be used to refer to what is unrecognized or considered digressive within normative criteria and can similarly refer to an active dissensus with these criteria or a non-recognition of nation and nation-state as a concept and a functional reality.

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I imagine that this is how René Vautier might have started a postcard to his friends and colleagues. He was born in 1928 in Camaret-sur-mer, Departement Finistère, Brittany, and he died in Cancale in 2015, also in Brittany. His film Afrique 50, an anti-colonialist manifesto realised in Mali and the Ivory Coast, was confiscated. He had reason to promote himself as the “most censured” French filmmaker. Many of his films side with the Algerian liberation movement.

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