This special issue of Cinéma&Cie aims at pushing the discussion on the relationships between avant-garde arts and popular culture far beyond traditional scholarship on the topic, stressing the concept of cultural history more than the specificity of film, media and music histories. By adopting a global perspective, the authors will elaborate useful analytical and theoretical tools to re-assess the “avantpop connection” as a dynamics of two-way exchanges across several artistic and media domains and different geographical and historical contexts.