Hollywood has created the foreign film in the US. While European nations may bemoan the fact that 70 percent or more of films that dominate their marquees have American origins and Hollywood blockbusters top the charts from Hong Kong to Buenos Aires, roughly 98 percent of the films shown in the US are domestic. The remainder, then, are marked as different and specialized—in terms of content, audience and even venue. Yet audiences have developed clear expectations of classical Hollywood formulae, recognizable characters—if not stars—and movies in English that continually constrain the market; art films, by contrast, are subtitled rather than dubbed for mass distribution.

Moreover, Hollywood has appropriated international stars and settings within its own production—whether borrowing (as in Chow Yun Fat in 1999–2000’s Anna and the Kïng) or remaking (Three Men and a Baby, 1987, remaking a 1985 French hit).

Certainly some non-American films achieve mass distribution. British films in particular share language and stars with Hollywood, have been popular for decades and are even marked with a certain epic cachet. Canadian films have been hard pressed to compete with American resources; hence, directors like Atom Egoyan often occupy a liminal status. In the 1980s, Hong Kong films also gained wider markets through the international stardom of Jackie Chan, although directors like John Woo and Ringo Lam have also succumbed to the budgets of Hollywood in producing American versions of style and stories—a path followed in earlier generations by directors like Josef von Sternberg, Fritz Lang and Alfred Hitchcock.

There are important exceptions too. Roberto Benigni’s Life is Beautiful (1998) also received a wide distribution (as well as Oscar accolades) in both dubbed and subtitled versions. The Oscar for best foreign film (inaugurated in 1947) has recognized many major directors. Despite repeated recognition of Japanese films in the 1950s, and a few coproductions thereafter, it has also tended to reaffirm European films as art. Only one Latin American film has won the accolade.

The audience for “foreign films,” then, is presumed to approach film with critical expertise, dedication and a seriousness that tends to preclude importation of popular romances and comedies (although pornography has been an importable category). For decades, this also entailed specialized publicity and venues. In fact, the art cinema has been marked by cramped quarters, alternative high culture accoutrements (expresso bars, bookshops) and an erudite dedication to film that might mix current releases with retrospectives on directors like Bergman, Kiorastami, Fellini or Kurosawa. Other films have been screened in cinema clubs, especially on college campuses or in major metropolitan centers. Smaller cities might have one cinema that survives on a mixture of artistic and semipopular films. Film festivals also have screened works that no national distributor would risk—films that are not necessarily anti-American but are, at least, unfamiliar to the American spectator.

Some foreign films are also linked to ethnic populations in the United States.

International politics—as in films from China or the former Soviet Union—may also support distribution. In the early twentieth century certain populations were able to support independent theaters—like those of major Chinatowns or Hispanic neighborhoods; others rented halls for special showings. In an era of mass video and satellite television, this taste has been satisfied by videos available in specialty shops, grocers and other sites, as well as direct retransmission of external broadcasts. While these tend to offer more popular foreign-language films (rather than “art” films), their audiences are circumscribed. Nonetheless, Chinese theaters profited from the boom in Hong Kong films.

Meanwhile, cinema classes and critics have created an international canon of “serious” films that constitute high film culture even without boxoffice clout. Here, the impact of auteurs has been important in both availability and acceptance—people will watch a film by Truffaut, Saura, Wenders or Ray rather than identifying the product with a particular national origin. Overall, the equation of “foreign” and “art” excludes many popular films outside the US as it shapes the stylistic and intellectual demands imposed on American independent/artistic productions.