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Series

MARTIAL / ART

January 26 to February 10

The wuxia movie is to the cinema of the Chinese diaspora what the Western is to the United States or the samurai film to Japan—a repository of myths and cultural memory, steeped in ritual. A total art that embraces music, dance, and literature along with combat skills, the typical wuxia narrative unfolds against an ever-changing historical and political backdrop, a social-realist grounding for works otherwise attached to legend and lore. Since the earliest days of Chinese moviemaking the wuxia genre has been a fertile playground for filmmakers’ experimentation; this series celebrates some of the most revolutionary reimaginings of the wuxia from Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Mainland China, with work ranging from the baroque and ornate to the deconstructed.

Previously Screened