Both Western and Asian media tends to focus on cultural exchanges of the 'East meets West' variety ('West' specifically referring to Europe/North America). But the fact is, for millennia, non-Western cultures have been interacting and exchanging ideas in no less important and interesting ways.

Countless Western-made films on the theme of East-West relations (examples being Madame Butterfly, The Far Pavilions, Heaven and Earth, Indochine) have exported beyond their countries of origin. There should be remembered, however that such stories only represent a very small percentage of international relations. In this issue, we focus on Asian films whose themes involve international relations between Asian nations, or a friendship/romance between Asians of different cultural backgrounds.

[Our definition of 'Asian' here is the dictionary definition of 'Asian', which refers the people of the entire Asian continent and its islands, all the way from Israel to Indonesia. Instead of limiting ourselves to the narrow U.S.-centric view of 'Asian' as a racial term applied only to East Asians and Southeast Asians, we prefer to acknowledge the geographic breadth and racial diversity of all Asia, acknowledging both cultural differences and commonalities between various Asian nationalities. ]