This present volume of essays anthologizes a recent body of critical works written in English on the cinema of Hong Kong in the midst of the phenomenal rise of Hong Kong cinema as a worthy object of academic study. It is also an effort to give the cinemaa name. The analytical category is the "crisis cinema" which is not only thematically linked with the other two categories, namely "national" and "transnational" cinemas, but also shares their critical concerns. To put it figuratively by invoking the key trope in the book title Between Home and World, this volume suggests that any departure from "home" engenders a "crisis" - threat to our ontological security. What underlines the concern is how the aesthetics of film corresponds directly and indirectly to the politics of identity in a transitory moment and space, one that is between "home" and "world".
