In the first issue of the literary and culture journal Francosphères, Bill Marshall (2012) contributed a call to reshape the field of French Film Studies in ‘Cinéma-monde? Towards a Concept of Francophone Cinema’. When compared with the 2007 ‘Pour une “littérature-monde” en français’ manifesto from which it derives, cinéma-monde becomes at once an extension and an inversion of what the signatories of the manifesto proposed. While the signatories suggested that it was time to sign the ‘death certificate’ of francophone literature in a view to making all Frenchlanguage literature belong to the same category of ‘littérature-monde en français’, Marshall cites the shortcomings in the manifesto's line of argument: its Parisian-centredness, the tenuous relationship between the signatories, and its failure to address the many variants of the French language (2012: 35). In a reversal, Marshall offers that ‘Francophone cinema’ could account for all French-language films, and in his essay the concept of cinéma-monde becomes synonymous with ‘Francophone cinema’ – the category of ‘francophone’ being the very one the signatories of the manifesto sought to dismantle.

Marshall does not stop with a static category, but rather conceptualises it by transforming it into a verb, ‘francophonising,’ which leads to the ‘minorising’ of French national cinema through emphasis on four key elements, ‘borders, movement, language, and lateral connections’ (2012: 42). Through their lens, maintains Marshall, ‘Francophone cinema’ has the ability to inflect the dominant and pervasive view and reception of French national cinema, and along with it the field of French Film Studies. At the same time, by virtue of the fact that ‘Francophone cinema’ covers the topography of the world, the conceptual category is meant to call attention to the global-ness of cinema as an industry and product. This conceptualisation of ‘Francophone cinema’ with minorising as its primary operation can be seen as synonymous with cinéma-monde until the end of the article when Marshall suggests that perhaps the moment should be seen as ‘post-Francophone’ (51), therein turning the synonym on its head and leaving the definition of cinéma-monde open.