Some of you (and you know who you are) have been coming to our Made in Hong Kong Film Festival since it started way back in the 1990s. Others of you may have gotten hooked on Hong Kong movies by watching kung fu flicks on TV as a kid. Well, I have good news for all of you: the final weekend of this year’s festival is a celebration of old-school kung fu.
Celluloid fetishists also will want to know that the two films we’re showing tomorrow, The Blade and A Terra-Cotta Warrior, are being shown in rare 35mm prints. This one-two punch harkens back to the glory days of Hong Kong martial arts movies and will remind you why Hong Kong’s film industry took the world by storm.
The festival concludes Sunday with an appearance by Bobby Samuels, who joined our panel of African American martial artists last year. A martial arts champion before he began working in movies, Samuels was the first African American to be inducted into the Hong Kong Stuntman’s Association. He will discuss his experiences in the Hong Kong movie industry and present one of his films: The Red Wolf, a hijacking drama that has rightly been referred to “Die Hard on a cruise ship.”
