Melancholy Drift – Marking Time in Chinese Cinema

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.

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 carefully beside one another, begin to pulse anew under the deft touch of Jean Ma's analyses. -- Dudley Andrew, R. Selden Rose Professor of Film and Comparative Literature, Yale University