Martial arts cinema may be China's most globally popular as well as most culturally distinctive form of film making. With origins in traditional Chinese popular literature and a cinematic history going back to the silent film era, the genre has experienced multiple periods of popularity both in China since the 1920s and in the West since the 1960s-70s. This course will look at Chinese martial arts cinema with these learning goals in mind: - To learn the distinctive film style of the genre by discussing basic film techniques such as cinematography, editing, and performance. - To use martial arts films to explore deeper aspects of Chinese culture such as philosophy, religion, and ethics. - To see how the development of martial arts cinema reflected trends in modern Chinese history, including the tension between nationalism and globalism. We will watch films from the pre-1949 Republic of China, the post-1949 People's Republic of China, Hong Kong during the British colonial period, and Taiwan. Each week students will have one film to watch streaming as homework and a reading assignment usually totaling 20-30 pages.
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