Chinese Martial Arts Cinema

About this book

This updated edition is a comprehensive, fully researched account of the historical and contemporary development of the traditional martial arts genre in the Chinese cinema known as 'wuxia' (literal translation: martial chivalry) – a genre which audiences around the world became familiar with through the phenomenal ‘crossover’ hit 'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon'. The book unveils rich layers of the 'wuxia' tradition as it developed in the early Shanghai cinema in the late 1920s, and from the 1950s onwards, in the Hong Kong and Taiwan film industries.