Just a year after In Our Time (1982) was released, Taiwan’s critics were divided. Many, especially the older generation, tended to be reactionary rather than embracing new directions. Even though the government-backed Central Motion Picture had partially initiated New Cinema, local audiences had not fully welcomed the movement. These films remained elusive and rather difficult for domestic audiences to accept, despite the directors’ insistence on using film as art to look at the humble, day-to-day lived experience of the Taiwanese and the nation’s modern history. The older generation of critics, dominated by those who identified as Chinese Civil War victims exiled from the mainland, complained that New Cinema was anti-commercialist, anti-populist, and designed to appeal only to foreign audiences. Even though the legacy of Taiwan New Cinema provided great sustenance and inspiration for the next generation of filmmakers around the world, including Barry Jenkins (US), Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Thailand), Olivier Assayas (France), Jia Zhangke (China), Wang Bing (China), Hirokazu Kore-eda (Japan), and Bong Joon-ho (South Korea), Taiwan New Cinema in its formative period did not achieve the same traction domestically as it enjoyed at international film festivals. Even today, many people continue to believe New Cinema to be responsible for the collapse of Taiwan’s film industry – a myth that has been debunked by scholars (Chiao 1988; Lu 1998) many times but somehow remains an unstoppable narrative that is continually being retold.

Younger critics, meanwhile, praised the filmic style of the New Cinema and advocated on the side of change. The very reason used by older reviewers for despising New Cinema – catering to foreign audiences – was considered powerful leverage for New Cinema by the younger critics. New Cinema represented the internationally minded, modernist (and postmodern) cinema they envisioned. It provided resonances of Taiwan life with a fresh look and aesthetic innovations imbricated with the necessary vernacular modernism. However, this is not to say that the group of young critics and film professionals spoke with one voice. There is a distinction between sharing a vision to do things differently from the past and prescribing a Western paradigm; the very same concept of a new wave was associated with other national film movements, not least the French New Wave.