"Melancholy Drift in fact drifts scarcely at all; rather it rides the films of three Chinese auteurs right into the heart of its subject, the mismatch between private feeling and collective history. Nor is the book melancholy, for these crucial films, set

"From Wong Kar-wai's stop-motion techniques to Hou Hsiao-hsien's command of the long take and Tsai Ming-liang's suspension of narrative, the poetry of time has been crucial to the achievements of contemporary Chinese cinema, just as it is central to conte

"Theoretically sophisticated and elegantly written, Melancholy Drift elucidates the subject of cinematic time in its various configurations as a response to historical ruptures and political upheavals, as representational politics, and as a reinvention of

Jean Ma is assistant professor in the Department of Art and Art History at Stanford University, where she teaches in the Film and Media Studies Program. She is the coeditor, with Karen Beckman, of Still Moving Between Cinema and Photography (2008).