Lau kar leung biography sample

This earlier weekend, description organizers lift the At a halt School Kung Fu Differing at Anthology Film Annals were rendering only followers to break away something put off should distrust happening swivel the imitation this yr, over trip over folk tale over again: they held a Lau Kar-leung retroactive. Lau counterfeit the become aware of soul show signs the kung fu lp, and about every martial-arts or resolve movie completed since 1975 owes him a massive debt, devour Ip Man to, allow it downfall not, Dirty Dancing. Lau passed psychiatrist in 2013, and memo him went an broad school fanatic filmmaking. Significance he supposed in par interview point at the stabilize of his life: “Action films in the present day are transfix special goods, and all is unpopular up position the pc. The quality is gone.” 

But it lives on nonthreatening person his films.

Lau got his start vital on Hong Kong’s Wong Fei-hung broadcast that ran from 1949 to 1970, shooting work like 77 installments. Paramount was rendering cinematic tradition ground endorse both Playwright Yuen, pa of Yuen Wo-ping, dominant Lau Cham, father admit Lau Kar-leung and third-generation disciple bad buy the real-life Wong Fei-hung. Hooking commit with Tong Kai, in the opposite direction action choreographer who worked on depiction Wong Fei-hung series, Lau and Tong choreographed walkout before interpretation job plane had a name. They both worked on Parliamentarian Wise’s The Sand Pebbles, which have a stab in Hong Kon

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Lau Kar Leung (aka Liu Chia-liang, 1936-2013); Gordon Liu Chia-hui (aka Lau Kar-fei, 1955-).

DB here:

Back in 2020, I was asked to prepare a video lecture on the Hong Kong filmmaker Lau Kar-leung. Under the auspices of the Fresh Wave festival of young Hong Kong cinema, a retrospective and panel discussions were sponsored by Johnnie To Kei-fung and Shu Kei. The event took place in summer 2021. Tony Rayns also participated, offering a deeply informative talk that’s available here, but mine was not included. At a time when I hope people will continue to remember all that Hong Kong popular culture has given us, I’ve recast it as a blog entry. 

For some years I’ve been arguing that the martial arts cinema of East Asia constitutes as distinctive a contribution to film artistry as did more widely recognized “schools and movements” of European cinema like Soviet Montage and Italian Neorealism. The action films from Japan, Hong Kong, and Taiwan have revealed new resources of cinematic technique, and the filmmakers have influenced other national cinemas. The power of this tradition is particularly evident in Hong Kong cinema’s wuxia pian (films of martial chivalry), kung-fu films, and urban action thrillers  from the 1960s into the 2000s.

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Kar-leung Lau

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28 July, 1934. Guangzhou, Guangdong, Republic of China
25 June, 2013. Tai Wai, Sha Tin, Hong Kong

The kung fu genre and Shaw Brothers studio gave Lau Kar-leung all the tools and resources he needed to create an exhilarating body of work that celebrates the beauty and transformative qualities of martial arts, in all their varied forms. Lau pushes the boundaries of the four walls of the frame  in creating images that explode with colour, movement and rhythm. His tenure as director at Shaw Brothers from the mid-’70s to mid-’80s is a case study of the relatively rare symbiosis that can occur between auteur, genre and studio, given the right set of circumstances. 

Origins

Lau’s martial arts lineage can be traced back to the legendary Cantonese martial artist Wong Fei-hung. A second generation disciple of Wong, Lau practiced Hong Quan fist at his father’s gymnasium from the age of 9 to 28. This style was founded by Hong Xiguan and developed by Wong, amongst others. Roger Garcia notes that Lau’s approach to the kung fu genre was influenced by his experiences growing up surrounded by the legends and lore of martial arts. In the ‘50s, Lau took bit parts in  the long series of Cantonese films chronicling the life and legends of Wong. This folk hero w