Li Lihua: A Tribute
This year, the 35th Hong Kong Film Awards will honour Li Lihua with the Lifetime Achievement Award. As one of the “flowers of Shaw”, I first came across her as I researched “Shaw Sisters: the Fighting Women of Hong Kong Cinema”. I’m pleased that an actor who brought so much to Chinese cinema is being celebrated in this way. For those who may not be familiar with her, I present a short introduction on Li’s contributions to Chinese cinema.
Posted in Events and tagged china, Chinese, culture, film, Hong Kong Film Awards, Li Lihua, Shaw Brothers Studios
Snow Girl and the Dark Crystal: the Adolescence of Contemporary Chinese Fantasy Cinema
The Chinese Lunar calendar doesn’t always match up with ours, and our festivals hardly ever overlap. Whilst the West gets all its gruesome ghosts and ghouls taking centre stage at the end of October, the biggest festival of the dead in China takes place half way through the seventh lunar month. This friday saw the end of Zhong Yuan (or Ghost Month https://snowpavilion.co.uk/zhong-yuan-ghost-month/), and to celebrate, here’s a review of 2015’s big fantasy monster movie, released internationally (but not in the UK yet) in August.
Posted in Articles and tagged Attack on Titan, Bingbing Li, china, Chinese, cinema, culture, demon, demon slayer, DevilMan, fantasy, film, Frozen, Ghost Month, horror, Kun Chen, Labyrinth, Lord of the Rings, monster, Peter Pau, Shaw Brothers, Snow Girl and the Dark Crystal, Tsui Hark, Wuxia, Zhang Ji Zhong, Zhong Kui, Zhong Yuan
Queer China at CVF 2015
The Chinese Visual Festival is a mixed bag, documentaries, art films, first time projects and a few gems. It’s difficult for me to cover the whole festival, but I try and cover a couple of screenings each year. This year’s LGBT programme was most inviting, and having missed last year’s, it was one I was determined to attend.
Posted in Events and tagged avant garde, Beijing, bisexuality, china, Chinese, Chinese Visual Festival, cosplay, culture, documentary, Fan Popo, feminism, film, gender, Guangzhou, homosexuality, LGBT, queer, Shanghai, Sun Yat-Sen University, transgender, VaChina Monologues, Vagina Monologues
Hero of Shaolin (1984) : For the Hardcore
It’s been a big autumn for Shaolin in Britain, what with the European Shaolin Festival in October, followed by the re-release of 1984 kungfu classic Hero of Shaolin by Terracotta Distributions on the 10th of November.
Posted in Events and tagged china, Chinese, cinema, culture, film, kung fu, movie, ninja, Shaolin, undead
On Chinese Horror: Mainland Classics
Happy Halloween. To celebrate, I’m going to tell you about the history of horror films in mainland China. It’s true that there haven’t been as many horror classics produced in the People’s Republic, as in Hong Kong, due to closer control of more “sensationalist” content, but we should remember that it was the film talent from Shanghai, who migrated to Hong Kong in the early twentieth century that helped Hong Kong’s legendary cinema industry flourish.
Posted in Articles and tagged china, Chinese, cinema, culture, film, horror, mainland, Music at Midnight, noir, Phantom of the Opera
On Chinese Horror: From Xiangxi Legends to HK Zombies
Continuing on with my series on Chinese Horror, I want to talk about Jiangshi (僵尸) films that have made them the overriding image of the Chinese Supernatural.
The beginning of the 1980s saw the release of a wave of Hong Kong zombie movies featuring those blue green doleful jiangshi that hop around in Qing Dynasty official uniforms. These pioneers and the plethora of imitators, were mostly inspired by the legend of the Xiangxi Corpse Handlers from Hunan.
Posted in Articles and tagged china, Chinese, film, HK cinema, horror film, Jiang Shi, movie, Mr Vampire, New Wave, Spooky Bunch, supernatural, zombie
On Chinese Horror: the Jiangshi
In honour of World Zombie Day 2014, I wrote about the China’s traditional monster of the undead, which I have revised and updated for Ghost Month 2021. You might know these are the “hopping vampires” (a misnomer that I shall address in this article). The proper name for them is Jiangshi, and in fact, they had lived in the Chinese fictional imagination for 900 years before the movies.
Posted in Articles and tagged china, Chinese, cinema, culture, film, horror, Jiang Shi, literature, movie, zombie
On Chinese Horror: Early Zhi Guai (Tales of the Strange)
2014’s Zhongyuan or Ghost Month, took place in August, and Xiayuan was not until December. Nevertheless, with the crisp scent and keenness of the autumn air, I felt the delicious anticipation for All Hallow’s Eve. So I started a series on the Chinese horror genre. This was the first in the series, now with updates and revisions. It will focus on attitude towards the supernatural and the history of this kind of storytelling.
Posted in Articles and tagged china, Chinese, culture, film, Hong Kong cinema, horror, Liao Zhai, Pu SongLing, zombie