ENLARGE Kung Fu movies don't always get a lot of respect. For many movie viewers, they are as memorable for bad voice dubbing and inscrutable plot points as for gravity-defying stunts and dizzying fight choreography.
Enter Subway Cinema's sixth annual Old School Kung Fu Fest. The group of film enthusiasts, which also produces the New York Asian Film Festival, presents eight 35mm vintage martial-arts films Friday through Sunday at the Metrograph[2], the newly opened Chinatown theater that specializes in cinephile programs.
The screenings will spotlight Golden Harvest, the studio that made an international star of Bruce Lee and popularized Kung Fu movies with Western viewers in the 1970s.
To introduce martial-arts novices to the finer points of the genre, and important on- and off-screen players, we compiled a Kung Fu glossary, with comments from the programmers and other Fu-savvy sources.
Golden Harvest: The upstart company dethroned the Shaw Brothers as kings of the Hong Kong box office and took the genre global. In 1970, Shaw production chief Raymond Chow left the reigning studio to form the new enterprise. Top actors followed, including Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan[3] and Sammo Hung. "He gave them artistic freedom," said Dan Halsted, head programmer of the Hollywood Theatre in Portland, Ore., and a noted Kung Fu print collector. Fights were faster and more complex, and the movies were funny. "Golden Harvest films felt revolutionary compared to Shaw Brothers," Mr. Halsted said.
Gun Fu: An action movie that uses guns instead of fists. " John Woo kicked off the genre," said Grady Hendrix, a co-founder of the festival presenter, Subway Cinema, "and 'Big Bullet,' which we're screening, is the last of the high-caliber smackdowns before the Hong Kong industry imploded."
Jackie Chan: Martial artist, stuntman, actor, director, producer. One of the most prolific figures in martial-arts cinema, Mr. Chan began his career as Bruce Lee's stunt double. Once notorious for performing his own stunts, he has suffered a fractured skull, spinal damage, a dislocated pelvis and several broken noses, among other injuries. The festival screens "Rumble in the Bronx," which in 1995 popularized the actor with U.S. audiences.
ENLARGE Jeet Kune Do: Hybrid fighting style, incorporating boxing, the martial-art form Wing Chun and even elements of fencing. "Bruce Lee basically invented this in 1967," said Mr. Hendrix. The style anticipated the popularity of mixed martial arts.
Kung Fu: "The term applies to any action and martial-arts film from the 1960s to the 1990s made in east Asia," said Goran Topalovic, programmer and co-founder of Subway Cinema. "We can also include ninja films and contemporary urban action cinema. A lot of films Jackie Chan made weren't period martial-arts films."
ENLARGE Little Dragon: Nickname for Bruce Lee (1940-1973), the most famous martial-arts actor. "Everyone in Hong Kong remembers where they were when Bruce Lee died, it's like 'where were you when J.F.K. died,' " said Mr. Hendrix. The festival features Lee's "Enter the Dragon," which had its premiere in Hong Kong six days after his death and in 1973 became Hollywood's first Kung Fu production.
Ozploitation: A nickname for the Australian exploitation-film movement of the 1970s and '80s. Besides sex farces, hot-rod thrill rides, horror flicks and the original "Mad Max," the grab bag also included Kung Fu. "The Man from Hong Kong," a prime example, shows at the festival.
Sammo Hung: Actor, fight choreographer, director, producer. "Watching Sammo in action is always mesmerizing," said Mr. Halsted. "He appears overweight and out-of-shape, which he always plays up and pokes fun at in his films, but he's lightning fast." Some of Mr. Hung's most breathtaking work is on display in "Pedicab Driver," a festival selection.
Seven Little Fortunes: Nope, not fortune cookies. "They are the seven Peking Opera School kids who were trained together and grew up to be the most important folks in Hong Kong action cinema," said Mr. Hendrix. Three of the Fortunes are featured in the festival: Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung and Yuen Biao.
Shaw Brothers: The Hong Kong film producers made 1,000 films between 1958 and 1987, dominating the martial-arts market in the 1960s and '70s.
Tsui Hark: One of the defining figures behind the resurgence of Hong Kong cinema in the 1990s, Mr. Hark made such classics as "Peking Opera Blues," and produced "A Chinese Ghost Story" and "A Better Tomorrow," among many others. The festival screens his 1995 film "The Blade," a remake of the Shaw Brothers wuxia epic "The One-Armed Swordsman."
Wing Chun: Once considered a kind of sissy Kung Fu, the form is a very practical, close-range fighting technique. "Wing Chun really got no respect," Mr. Hendrix said. "But in the late 1970s, Sammo Hung made a bunch of Wing Chun movies, and it launched this revival." Among them is "Prodigal Son," screening at the festival.
Wuxia: A genre of stories set historically amid the ancient Chinese dynasties. The festival includes a rarely screened example, "A Terra-Cotta Warrior," starring the so-called first couple of 1990s Chinese cinema, Zhang Yimou and Gong Li[7].
References
- ^ 0 COMMENTS (www.wsj.com)
- ^ Metrograph (www.wsj.com)
- ^ Jackie Chan (topics.wsj.com)
- ^ Facebook Post (www.facebook.com)
- ^ Facebook Post (www.facebook.com)
- ^ Facebook Post (www.facebook.com)
- ^ Gong Li (topics.wsj.com)
Source → Kung Fu Movie Viewing, Made Easy
