Given its features as a modern mass medium and thus closely related to the nation, cinema has rightly been regarded as a privileged site for putting forward and contesting representation of national identity, or in short, as a main arena in which narratives of national identity are negotiated.

Throughout, the book emphasizes the contingent nature of hegemonic representations, and our ongoing need to tell and to listen to - or indeed, views - stories that weave together a variety of strands to convincingly tell us who we are.