Focusing on the work of four contemporary filmmakers—Ang Lee, Edward Yang, Hou Hsiao-hsien, and Tsai Ming-liang—the authors explore how these filmmakers broke from tradition, creating a cinema that is both personal and insistent on examining Taiwan's complex history.

Featuring stills, anecdotes, and close readings of films, the authors consider the influence of Hong Kong and martial arts films, directors' experiments with autobiography, the shifting fortunes of the Taiwanese film industry, and Taiwan cinema in the context of international cinema's aesthetics and business practices.