Heroic Grace: The Chinese Martial Arts Film

The martial arts film is a crucial yet little-understood genre of Chinese cinema. While today fans of the martial arts film can be found around the world, and filmmakers from Hollywood to Japan to France draw inspiration from it, the unique origins, history and outstanding artistry of the genre remain relatively unknown. This program traces the development of the martial arts film from the silent wuxia pian (swordplay films; literally "martial chivalry" films) made in Shanghai in the 1920s and early '30s, through the '40s and '50s when production shifted to Hong Kong and Taiwan, to the ascendancy of the "new school" Mandarin swordplay films in the '60s and the kung fu (unarmed combat) heyday of the '70s.

The achievements of some of the genre's most innovative directors prior to the 1980s—names such as Zhang Che, King Hu, Lau Kar-Leung (Liu Jialang), Chu Yuan and Wang Xinglei—have gone largely unheralded beyond circles of specialists and fans, largely because there were no good prints of their films in circulation. What with faded color, panning and scanning, and atrocious dubbing, those prints and videotapes that did exist gave only the faintest impression of the films' original impact. We have sought to remedy this situation by presenting as many new 35mm or archival prints as possible; all films will be presented in their original language with (in all but two cases) English subtitles.

In conjunction with the film series, the Archive has invited four international film scholars and critics—David Bordwell, Sam Ho, Bérénice Reynaud and Stephen Teo—to contribute their reflections on the martial arts film. The collection of essays, edited and introduced by film critic David Chute, is available in the complimentary "Heroic Grace" catalog (PDF), along with more extensive notes on the films and filmmakers in the series.

"Heroic Grace: The Chinese Martial Arts Film" Tour has been selected and organized by the UCLA Film & Television Archive, and has been made possible with Presenting Sponsorship from:

Additional sponsorship has been provided by Cathay Pacific Airways.