UCLA's Westwood campus Thursday, November 17 - Sunday, December 11.

Please also note that the late Bruce Lee would have been 65 years old this month.  The Archive will be showing both THE WAY OF THE DRAGON (1972) and FIST OF FURY (1972) with Bruce Lee's daughter, Shannon Lee Keasler, introducing the films.

In keeping with martial arts movie tradition, the UCLA Film & Television Archive returns with a sequel to the successful Heroic Grace series launched in 2003. Heroic Grace II picks up where the first one left off.  While the debut series traced the development of this most influential of Chinese film genres, from its origins in Shanghai in the 1920s through the halcyon days of Hong Kong-based production in the 1970s and '80s, this series digs deeper into that enormously creative period when kung fu entered our popular lexicon, and teases out linkages to the '90s generation of Hong Kong action and the more recent pan-Chinese wuxia pian (swordplay film) revival.
 
Heroic Grace II accords a closer look at the overlooked auteurs of the martial arts cinema.  To the roster of masters Zhang Che (Chang Cheh) and King Hu (Hu Jinquan), we can now add Chu Yuan (Chor Yuen) and Lau Kar-leung (Liu Jialiang), and possibly Chung Chang-wha, Wu Ma and Huang Feng.  At various points in their careers, these directors worked for major Hong Kong studios Shaw Bros., Cathay and Golden Harvest. At other times, they branched out on their own, shooting movies in Taiwan or for smaller independent companies in Hong Kong, or in the case of Chung, worked in South Korea.
    
Martial arts cinema was nothing if not star-driven in its postwar, “new school” and beyond incarnations, and the stars who emerged in the '70s and '80s were the brightest of them all: Bruce Lee (Li Xiaolong), Chen Guantai, Luo Lie, David Jiang (Jiang Dawei), Di Long, Gordon Liu (Liu Jiahui), Jackie Chan (Cheng Long) and Jet Li (Li Lianjie).  Heroic Grace II will screen a selection of their career highlights, as restorations or archival prints, many unavailable for public exhibition until now.
    
And finally the Archive celebrates the women who blazed paths of glory across the jiang hu (literally “rivers and lakes”; metaphorically the mythic realm of the martial arts), whose talents younger film fans may have glimpsed only in fragmentary form, oftentimes on butchered video.  Heroic Grace II will present rediscoveries of some of the best, rarely screened works featuring such martial arts queens as Angela Mao Ying, Helen Ma (Ma Hailun), Kara Hui (Wei Yinghong), Xu Feng, Jing Li, Betty Bei Di and Nora Miao (Miao Kexiu).
 
WED  12/7  7:30 pm
DIRTY HO  (Lan Tou Hou)
(Hong Kong, 1979)  Directed by Lau Kar-leung
Fighting without seeming to fight—that's the ingenious premise at the heart of this dazzler by martial arts grandmaster Lau Kar-leung. The director's mainstay Gordon Liu plays a prodigal prince (and hyper-cultivated epicurean) targeted for assassination by his elder brother. Enter Wang Yu (not to be mistaken for the star of ONE-ARMED SWORDSMAN) as the eponymous Ho, a boisterous ruffian who reluctantly apprentices himself to the expert Liu. With the killers disguised as a wine merchant and an antiques dealer, the prince finds himself parrying dangerous kicks and blows while in art appreciation mode. The climactic fight-back-to-the-palace pitting prince and apprentice against a battery of swords and arrows is a set piece for the ages. Like the title it belies, this movie about the art of the martial arts brilliantly distills its director's penchant for discoursing on the beauty and rigor of a genre that's clearly more than chopsocky.
Shaw Bros. Producer: Run Run Shaw. Screenwriter: Ni Kuang. Cinematographers: Huang Yuetai, Ao Zhijun. Martial Arts Director: Lau K.L. Editors: Jiang Xinglong, Li Yanhai. With: Wang Yu, Gordon Liu Jiahui, Kara Hui, Xiao Hou. 35mm, in Cantonese with Chinese and English subtitles, 100 min.
 
FRI  12/9  7:30 pm
Newly restored by Celestial Pictures
MY YOUNG AUNTIE  (Zhangbei)
(Hong Kong, 1980)  Directed by Lau Kar-leung
A young widow (Kara Hui) arrives in Guangdong to deliver a fought-over deed of inheritance to the rightful heirs, her crotchety nephew-by-marriage (Lau Kar-leung) and his westernized son (Xiao Hou). Age and gender role reversals allow for a wealth of kung fu funny business: the nephew is easily twice as old as the aunt but still bound to respect family hierarchies; the fetching aunt has serious warrior chops despite her traditionally feminine appearance. Freely mixing martial arts moves with allusions to popular Hollywood genres (musicals, swashbucklers and even war movies), MY YOUNG AUNTIE is an unalloyed triumph of kung fu comedy. Hui delivers a winning performance as the woman who unsettles the standard teacher-student paradigm of Lau's oeuvre.
Shaw Bros. Producer: Run Run Shaw. Screenwriters: Lau K.L., Li Taiheng. Cinematographer: Ao Zhijun. Martial Arts Directors: Lau K.L., Jing Zhu, Xiao Hou. Editors: Jiang Xinglong, Li Yanhai. With: Lau K.L., Kara Hui, Xiao Hou, Wang Longwei. 35mm, in Mandarin with English subtitles, 114 min.
 
New 35mm print from Columbia Repertory
ONCE UPON A TIME IN CHINA  (Huang Feihong)
(Hong Kong, 1991)  Directed by Tsui Hark (Xu Ke)
Tsui Hark takes on the popular Wong Fei-Hung (Huang Feihong) legend in this rousingly revisionist film, the first in a six-part series that re-imagines the martial arts paragon for the wuxia-meets-kung fu “wire-fu” action of the '90s. A Jet Li in peak form summons a whirling arsenal of “shadowless kicks,” somersaults and leaps to repel the incursion of opium and slave trading by corrupt Westerners into China in the 19th century. The film makes room for grand historical drama and slapstick comedy, sumptuous period décor and whimsical romance, but is best remembered for its virtuosic choreography of combat, most famously the breathtaking fight to the death atop bamboo ladders.
Golden Harvest. Producer: Tsui H. Screenwriters: Leung Yiu-ming, Elsa Tang Bik-yin, Tsui H., Yuen Gai-chi. Cinematographers: Arthur Wong Ngok-tai, Bill Wong Chung-bo, David Chung Chi-man. Martial Arts Directors: Lau Kar-wing, Yuen Shun-yi, Yuen Cheung-yan (Yuan Xiangren). With: Jet Li, Yuen Biao, Rosamund Kwan Chi-lam, Jackie Cheung Hok-yau. 35mm, in Cantonese with English subtitles, 134 min.
 
 
SAT  12/10 7:30 pm
Restored by the Hong Kong Film Archive
THE VALIANT ONES  (Zhonglie Tu)
(Hong Kong, 1975)  Directed by King Hu
King Hu's kinesthetic poetry gets distilled to its essence in a late masterpiece suffused with a deep sense of melancholy. Set characteristically for Hu in the Ming Dynasty (14th-17th century), THE VALIANT ONES refers to the crack team—including a coolly enigmatic swordsman (Bai Ying) and his taciturn wife (Xu Feng)—assembled by military strategist Roy Chiao to defend the Chinese coast against Japanese pirates. Tantalizingly abstract in its fight choreography—action is expressed in calligraphic strokes such as the brief clanging of blades, the whizzing-by of arrows and the rhythmic flight of bodies—the film is nevertheless majestic in its evocation of landscape. But unlike the preternaturally gifted heroes of most swordplay films, Hu's valiant ones are mortal. His “Picture of Valor” (the film's Chinese title) is ultimately ironic; its somber resolution undercuts any triumph in victory.
Producer/Screenwriter: K. Hu. Cinematographer: Chen Qingqu. Martial Arts Director: Sammo Hung. Editor: Xiao Nan. With: Roy Chiao, Xu Feng, Bai Ying, S. Hung. 35mm, in Mandarin with English subtitles, 107 min.
 
CLANS OF INTRIGUE  (Chu Liuxiang)
(Hong Kong, 1977)  Directed by Chu Yuan
Chu Yuan continued his cinematic transmutation of the Gu Long literary oeuvre with this gripping wuxia “whodunnit” set in the timeless realm of martial chivalry. Famed swordsman Chu Liuxiang (Di Long) is framed for the murder of three clan chiefs. Leaving behind leisure and connoisseurship—a resplendent houseboat and poetry-spouting friends—Chu embarks on an investigation that leads him from a mystery woman to Buddhist monks and a grotto-dwelling clan of female fighters led by a lesbian (Betty Bei Di). Gradually he uncovers a convoluted conspiracy that culminates in an unforgettable gender-bending twist. Fantastical and fringed with risqué sexual flourishes, CLANS OF INTRIGUE is echt Chu, a baroque martial arts saga replete with artifice and larger-than-life archetypes engaged in elegantly choreographed mortal combat.
Shaw Bros. Producer: Runme Shaw. Screenwriter: Ni Kuang. Based on a novel by Gu Long. Cinematographer: Huang Jie. Martial Arts Directors: Tong Kai, Huang Peiji. Editor: Jiang Xinglong. With: Di Long, Betty Bei Di, Nora Miao, Yue Hua. 35mm, in Mandarin with Chinese and English subtitles, 99 min.
 
 
SUN  12/11  7:00 pm
Newly restored by Celestial Pictures
THE FIVE VENOMS  (Wu Du)
(Hong Kong, 1978)  Directed by Zhang Che
Long a favorite of martial arts movie fans, THE FIVE VENOMS was the defining showcase for late-career, all-male-ensemble Zhang Che. The dying master of the Venoms House tasks his one remaining disciple to bring to justice the young man's five predecessors, now dispersed and fallen into ignominious criminality. The elder Venoms quintet, however, possesses formidable skills, each in a distinctive fighting style: scorpion, snake, centipede, gecko and toad. The youngest Venom locates them in a small town, and in this nexus of gold loot, shady cops and corrupt judges, a suspenseful mystery plot unfolds, punctuated by some of the most lucidly articulated and imaginative fight sequences of the martial arts cinema. Uncharacteristically—and unlike even the previous Heroic Grace selection, BLOOD BROTHERS—Zhangian brotherhood is rent asunder by greed and betrayal among men.
Shaw Bros. Producer: Runme Shaw. Screenwriters: Ni Kuang, Zhang C. Cinematographers: Gong Muduo, Cao Huiqi. Martial Arts Directors: Liang Ting, Lu Feng, Dai Qixian. Editor: Jiang Xinglong. With: Jiang Sheng, Sun Jian, Guo Zhui, Lu Feng, Wei Bai, Luo Mang. 35mm, in Mandarin with English subtitles, 97 min.

PARKING: There is free parking on Loring Ave. after 6pm on weekdays and all day on weekends.  Parking is also available adjacent to the James Bridges Theater in Lot 3 for $8. 

(The Archive has made the following arrangement for its patrons: Archive patrons can purchase a parking permit for $5 to be used for future visits to the James Bridges Theater for a screening.  This represents a $3 savings over the usual price of $8.) 

Tickets are also available at the theater starting one hour before showtime: $7 general admission; $5 students, seniors and UCLA Alumni Association members with ID.

310.206.FILM.

www.cinema.ucla.edu