Producing a reference work about a national cinema is an uncomfortable project. Both Seamus Deane, an Irish intellectual, and Aijaz Ahmad, a subcontinental intellectual, have produced powerful critiques of the very attempts to provide a history of any particular art-form presented in terms of a nation-state’s achievements. In this respect, a reference work is no different from a historical account: both construct what they purport to address. A book purporting ...
