Sheng-mei Ma explains the title of this collection of essays as a reference to both the sense that Taiwan has just been passed by, and that its survival is threatened. He locates the book as opening "from where Taiwan film scholarship has generally left off, interrogating relatively unknown contemporary filmmakers who are not likely to ever make it to the world stage..." (p. 3). Indeed, the island's recent film culture has been neglected, yet, as Ma observes, under globalization it exhibits new characteristics that merit analysis. More polemically, he observes that "In the rise of China in the twenty-first century, a crop of 'New China Hands' - naturalized Americans of Chinese descent and mainland affiliation - has exerted considerable control over Western discourse on China, Taiwan included. It is against this eliding of Taiwan, this continuous trauma of being undone, that Taiwan Studies should direct its energy" (p. 16). In its drive to fill a gap in Taiwan film studies and counter the "eliding of Taiwan" - whatever its origins - this collection is welcome.
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