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"Transnational Chinese cinema" has become an ever-more handy portmanteau term for the cluster of industries, people and products that have turned film from the Chinese-speaking world into a global commodity. Like most portmanteau terms, the phrase is fuzzy; but that vagueness is crucial to its value. The reality is that film which is in some way "Chinese" is now so multi-form that it stumps attempts to define it in tidy ways. Yet its importance - to the societies of the Chinese-speaking world, to how the world understands China, and to cinema itself - is such that scholars need ways to describe it. Essentially, Chinese Connections is an attempt to unpack the term "transnational Chinese cinema" in its various guises so as to give this sometimes slapdash description more rigorous meaning. The volume's basic frame of reference is the "three Chinas" (the PRC, Hong Kong and Taiwan), the Chinese diaspora and, most intriguingly, the cinematic crossbreeds that are appearing as...