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Thread: Touch of Zen

  1. #1
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    Touch of Zen

    It is my hope that some day, we will have threads on all of the classics here. A lot of the great films that predate our forum never got their own threads and are only mentioned in passing. But thankfully, articles appear in the newsfeed that remind us of these venerated films.


    HSU FENG IN "THE VALIANT ONES," 1975 SOURCE: EVERETT COLLECTION

    The Way of Feng
    The Divine Mistress of Kung Fu Flick Doom, Hsu Feng
    March 04, 2014By Zane Simon

    WHY YOU SHOULD CARE
    Because if everybody is kung fu fighting and their kicks are fast as lightning, who are you to not know that one of the pioneers was Hsu Feng?
    Women’s roles started changing wildly in the 1960s, and it wasn’t too long before pop culture caught up to the social upheavals and produced a movie movement: female badasses.

    A prime example of the classic criminal woman of action can be seen in Jean Simmons in Otto Preminger’s Angel Face.

    While historically there had been powerful, aggressive women in the movies, their strength was more often seen as the product of their unfulfilled weakness: Because they couldn’t find a place in their “natural” role as a woman, they turned to violence. Which is to say that a woman who committed an act of physical aggression was most often a criminal, or near enough to drain off an audience’s empathy.

    But benevolent women action stars? These were mostly reserved for the realms of low-budget camp, like 1966’s The Wild World of Batwoman.

    Until a one Ms. Hsu Feng.

    She was a new film archetype: the heroic woman who lived comfortably in the kicks and combinations of male action stars.

    In 1971, Hsu Feng starred in one of the seminal wuxia films, A Touch of Zen, and delivered one of the most singularly awesome performances in martial arts film history. Helped along by the popularity of the Blaxploitation genre and the increased desire for action films in general, Feng’s work pushed the notion that a woman could be sane and strong and violent.


    Scene from A Touch of Zen

    Her character, Yang Hui-ching, was not without emotion, but her desires and emotional entanglements were secondary to what drove her character as an action hero: survival and justice. Yang worked within some of the classic conventions of strong women in cinema — a warrant out for her execution briefly pits her as a potential villain — but those conventions are dismissed and distorted as soon as they are established. She is not cunning or devious, not driven by a desire for bloodshed, but when she is pursued by Ouyang Nian, a murderous, corrupt official, she defends herself and those she cares for with deadly force.

    Alongside actresses like Angela Mao and Pei-pei Cheng, Hsu Feng helped create a new film archetype: the heroic woman, an action heroine who could live comfortably in the kicks and combinations of male action stars.

    Film historian Stephen Teo said of her work, in his book King Hu’s A Touch of Zen, “Yang’s silence and her action are crucial indicators of her femininity on the one hand, and her feminism on the other.… [Her love interest’s] weakness is contrasted with Yang’s show of “masculine” courage and strength in repelling the intrusion of Ouyang Nian.” Teo goes on to note that director King Hu didn’t need his star to take on a cross-dressing male identity to show her strength; rather, she was able to show her “masculinity” through her own female identity.

    Hsu Feng would go on to other successes in her career (Raining in the Mountain and The Valient Ones) and won a pair of Golden Horses (China’s Oscar equivalent) for her performances in Assassin and The Pioneers. After she left acting, she became a noted film producer; her film company’s production of Farewell My Concubine won the Palme d’Or at the 1993 Cannes Film Festival and snagged Oscar nominations for Best Foreign Film and Best Cinematography. However, her role in A Touch of Zen has remained her most timeless, and it is still one of the strongest characterizations of a woman in action cinema.

    Which now? You should see.


    Gene Ching
    Publisher www.KungFuMagazine.com
    Author of Shaolin Trips
    Support our forum by getting your gear at MartialArtSmart

  2. #2
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    Restored

    For the Criterion Collection.

    Exclusive: Trailers For Janus Films Re-release Of King Hu's Wuxia Classics 'A Touch Of Zen' And 'Dragon Inn'
    By Edward Davis | The Playlist
    April 4, 2016 at 11:53AM



    Modern martial arts pictures like "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," "Hero," "The Grandmaster," and "House Of Flying Daggers" plus films like Quentin Tarantino's homage to the genre "Kill Bill," and the wire work in "The Matrix," can all draw a line back to the films of King Hu. The director combined beautiful imagery with groundbreaking action scenes, creating an oeuvre like no other, and this spring two of his pictures are returning to the big screen.

    Janus Films will be releasing The Criterion Collection's restoration of 1971's "A Touch Of Zen" and "Dragon Inn." The three hour epic 'Zen' follows Yang (Hsu Feng), a noblewoman and fugitive hiding in a small village, who must escape into the wilderness with a shy scholar and two aides. There, the quartet face a massive group of fighters and are joined by a band of Buddhist monks surprisingly skilled in the art of battle.

    Meanwhile, 1967's "Dragon Inn" is set during the Ming Dynasty, and kicks off when the Emperor's Minister of Defense is framed and executed by a powerful court eunuch, and his family is sent into exile and pursued by secret police. As the chase ensues, a mysterious band of strangers begins to gather at the remote Dragon Gate Inn, where paths (and swords) will cross.

    You can check out the trailers for both below. "A Touch Of Zen" opens on April 22nd at Film Forum, with "Dragon Inn" following on May 6th at Film Society of Lincoln Center. The films will roll out nationally from there.

    http://www.indiewire.com/embed/playe...0000&width=480

    http://www.indiewire.com/embed/playe...000&width=480b

    Gene Ching
    Publisher www.KungFuMagazine.com
    Author of Shaolin Trips
    Support our forum by getting your gear at MartialArtSmart

  3. #3
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    It would be a real treat to see this on the big screen

    Hope it comes to a place and time that works out for me.





    A TOUCH OF ZEN
    King Hu Taiwan, 1971
    In King Hu’s grandest work, Yang (Hsu Feng), a fugitive noblewoman at risk of being captured and executed, hides in a small village and then must escape into the wilderness with a shy scholar and two aides. There, the quartet face a massive group of fighters and are joined by a band of Buddhist monks surprisingly skilled in the art of battle.
    BOOK NOW
    DETAILS
    180 min
    Color
    2.35:1
    Taiwanese
    FORMATS
    DCP
    Gene Ching
    Publisher www.KungFuMagazine.com
    Author of Shaolin Trips
    Support our forum by getting your gear at MartialArtSmart

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