New cinemas from Asia

It can be argued that the most exciting contemporary cinemas in the last decade or so have emerged from Asia. The combined forces of the three new waves in the Chinese world – mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong – since the early 1980s have produced established masters like Zhang Yimou, Chen Kaige, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Edward Yang, Ang Lee, Tsai Ming-liang, Stanley Kwan and Wong Kar-wai, as well as the new visions of Jiang Wen, Jia Zhangke, Liu Bingjian, Chang Cho-chi, Lin Cheng-sheng, Yee Chih-yen, and Fruit Chan. Iranian cinema, led by Abbas Kiarostami and the Makhmalbaf family, revives humanism and realism with its deceptively simple aesthetics. More recently, the booming industries of South Korea and Thailand, alongside always-thriving Bollywood, fascinate with their idiosyncratic variations on generic forms.