American director Sam French helped make history this year when his film "Buzkashi Boys" became the first movie shot in Afghanistan to receive an Oscar nomination. But the 29-minute film holds another unusual distinction: It was funded almost entirely out of a $150 million State Department campaign to combat extremism, support Afghan media and burnish the U.S. image in Afghanistan.

I can't remember how many times I've seen the first Die Hard. Likewise the first Rocky movie, the first Rambo, First Blood, also the first... These franchises inevitably went downhill - perhaps not as steeply as Rocky, but still a disappointment. (OK, Aliens, the second in the series, was the exception). Perhaps this is a stand-in metaphor for America's power and promise, always delivered first with an impressive bang, until reality sinks in.

The biggest hit in Chinese cinema is a marketable contemporary comedy of the ilk of The Hangover. Would it succeed in the US? Something unspoken lay behind expectant articles in the film press for its US opening: the idea that this could be the point when cinema's trade winds stopped blowing from west to east, and the reverse became possible.

Nigeria’s Nollywood is the third largest film industry worldwide...Nollywood has not even recognized how powerful she is becoming, for Nollywood poses a business threat to Hollywood especially in Africa and developing nations. What Nollywood did in Africa and beyond was to displace Hollywood by telling the stories average Africans can identify with and not some tinseltown stories that are quite far away from African experience and cultural make-up.

Nearly 40 minutes have been chopped from the Hollywood film "Cloud Atlas" for Chinese audiences, deleting both gay and straight love scenes to satisfy local censors despite a movie-going public that increasingly chafes at censorship.

Tensions between Iran and the US were intensifying in 2008 when American basketball player Kevin Sheppard went to play for the Iranian league. A German filmmaker has brought his unusual story to the cinema.

Dalian Wanda Group, the world's biggest owner of movie theatres, is in talks with leading Hollywood studios to co-produce films and is looking to buy and build hotels in major U.S. cities as the Chinese firm eyes a $10 billion (6 billion pounds) 'soft power' spending spree.

To give a fillip to the cultural ties between India and Pakistan, the first edition of “Delhi International Film Festival”, to be held in the Capital from December 21 to 27, will see the participation of 12 film-makers from the neighbouring country.