New Taiwan Cinema represents modernity by turning the present into history, all the while without becoming stale. In short, New Taiwan Cinema is timeless but, at the same time, speaks to the present; the best of this type of cinema is specific to the Taiwanese experience but retains a certain element of universality. If the defining feature of New Wave Cinema is its effort to break the silence of the past by aestheticising a collective experience, then the defining feature of Taiwan New Cinema, more generally, is its ability to reinvigorate a dying industry. Taiwan New Cinema is not defined by success or failure at the box office although it is constrained somewhat by time period. Before the 1980s, the rebellious discourse which was to define New Cinema existed in literary form only.