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CINEMA TAIWAN: Politics, Popularity and State of the Arts. Edited by Darrell William Davis and Ru-shou Robert Chen. London and New York: Routledge, 2007. xv, 236 pp. (Figures.) US$39.95, paper. ISBN 978-0-415-41258-2.
As China gains more and more prominence as an economic superpower, the pressure it exerts on the geo-political status of Taiwan intensifies. As the recent (and by now familiar) squabble over whether a film like Ang Lee's Lust, Caution should be entered into the Venice Film Festival under "Taiwan" or "Taiwan, China" indicates that, any consideration of Taiwan's history, politics or culture within a "national" framework would become mired in geo-political arguments. Avoiding the pitfalls of such an unproductive debate, Cinema Taiwan by its very tide defines its object of study not as a "national cinema" but rather as a "place where Taiwan is located by movies" (p. 8)....