This proposed panel at ASLE 2025 (July 8-11, 2025 at the University of Maryland) seeks proposals that attend to the complications of invoking the ideal of national cinema in the global landscape, with specific emphasis on the cinematic representations of agriculture, rural life, and their connections to colonial and Indigenous foodways.

The construct of national cinema is complex and differentially informed by anthropological, text-based, political, and economic approaches. Perhaps most plainly (if not impressionistically) defined by film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum, national cinema is understood …