Introduction

Abstract

Departing from the omnibus film project ‘Homeland and Diaspora’ (Yuanxiang yu lisan), this introduction outlines important questions to be explored throughout the book regarding what I have proposed as ‘independent border-crossing filmmaking’. I focus on a specific strand of auteurist independent cinema (and of image-making) emerging mainly since the late 1990s and early 2000s that project and articulate the experience of being mobile and displaced, being minority and diasporic, and/or journeying within and across various Southeast Asian and East Asian places. Detailed chapter summaries are also proffered.