Epilogue

Abstract

This epilogue advances the thesis laid out in the main body of the book by demonstrating how a nation’s soft power in the form of cinema can attract aliens to adopt practices and to develop projects—whether within or without the said nation’s territory—that might, in turn, reinvigorate, rejuvenate, and resurrect that nation’s cinema, becoming, as it were, the latter’s afterlives. It contends that, nearly four decades after its inception, Taiwan New Cinema continues to exert its influence across the world, with evidence ranging from open acknowledgment of affinity and specific filmmaking practices (such as homage and remakes) to other routes and detours (e.g., migration). By focusing on how Taiwan cinema attracts aliens to the island, this Epilogue also turns the outward-bound notion of soft power on its head not so much to discount its impact abroad but rather, precisely, to account for the harvesting of its effects as they travel back home like a boomerang. It maps out the implications of this alien resurrection for our understanding of Taiwan cinema and its afterlives vis-à‎-vis the three keywords of the book’s subtitle (namely, authorship, transnationality, and historiography) and the overarching framework of soft power (here emphasizing the role played by Taiwanese institutions).