Tsui Hark S Zu

Hong Kong cinema exploded into world culture during the 1990s, driven by its linkage with Hollywood's dynamic new digital special effects technologies. This book provides essential historical background to that remarkable set of events by analyzing the culture, political and technological network surrounding Tsui Hark's masterful but under-appreciated Zu: Warriors From the Magic Mountain. Schroeder examines how the film transformed Hong Kong action cinema from the 1980s to the present, which resulted in its rise as a dominant transnational style in close affiliation with the transformation of Hollywood cinema into a digital technology driven global enterprise.

Der Band widmet sich den vielfältigen Globalisierungsprozessen in filmischen Genrekonfigurationen. Dieser bislang erst in Ansätzen erforschte Themenkomplex wird anhand paradigmatischer Beispiele sowohl theoretisch perspektiviert als auch filmhistorisch kontextualisiert. Neben Analysen US-amerikanischer und europäischer Produktionen liegt der Fokus vor allem auch auf Filmen aus Afrika, Asien und Lateinamerika, wobei Kategorien wie nationale Kinematografien oder abgrenzbare Genremuster in den Fallbeispielen nur noch bedingt greifen. Den transnationalen Dimensionen der Filme entsprechend, versammelt der Band auch Beiträge von internationalen Vertretern der Film- und Medienwissenschaft, darunter Tim Bergfelder, Oksana Bulgakowa, Dimitris Eleftheriotis, Barry Keith Grant, Lúcia Nagib, Ella Shohat oder Robert Stam. The volume deals with the diverse processes of globalisation in cinematic configurations of genre. Focussing on significant examples, this up to now only rudimentarily researched area is both historically analysed as well as theoretically explored. Apart from U.S. and European productions, the volume mainly addresses films from Africa, Asia and Latin America, which render conceptions of national cinema or clearly definable genre patterns especially problematic. In accordance with the transnational dimension of the films, the volume assembles contributions of internationally renowned scholars such as Tim Bergfelder, Oksana Bulgakowa, Dimitris Eleftheriotis, Barry Keith Grant, Lúcia Nagib, Ella Shohat, or Robert Stam.

Tsui Hark, one of China’s most famous film artists, is little known outside of Asia even though he has directed, produced, written, or acted in dozens of film, some of which are considered to be classics of modern Asian cinema. This work begins with a biography of the man and a look at his place in Hong Kong and world cinema, his influences, and his thematic obsessions. Each major film of his career is then reviewed, production details are provided, and comments from Tsui Hark himself are given.

Flying ghosts, hopping vampires, seductive spirits, tree demons, evil sorcerers, living skeletons, possessed limbs and giant predatory tongues!

This book views the Dutch sinologist, Robert van Gulik’s Judge Dee mysteries as a hybrid East–West form of detective fiction and uses the concept of transculturation to discuss their hybrid nature with respect to their sources, production, and influence. The Judge Dee mysteries authored by Robert van Gulik (1910–1967) were the first detective stories to be set in ancient China. These hybrid narratives combine Chinese historical figures, traditional Chinese crime literature, and Chinese history and material culture with ratiocinative methods and psychoanalytic themes familiar from Western detective fiction. This new subject and detective image won a global readership, and the book discusses the innovations that van Gulik’s Judge Dee mysteries brought to both Chinese gong’an literature and Western detective fiction. Furthermore, it introduces contemporary writers from different countries who specialize in writing detective fiction or gong’an novels set in ancient China. The book will meet the interest of fans of Judge Dee stories throughout the world and will also appeal to both students and researchers of comparative literature, Chinese literature, and crime novels studies.

Since the 1960s, Hong Kong cinema has helped to shape one of the world's most popular cultural genres: action cinema. Hong Kong action films have proved popular over the decades with audiences worldwide, and they have seized the imaginations of filmmakers working in many different cultural traditions and styles. How do we account for this appeal, which changes as it crosses national borders? Hong Kong Connections brings leading film scholars together to explore the uptake of Hong Kong cinema in Japan, Korea, India, Australia, France and the US as well as its links with Taiwan, Singapore and the Chinese mainland. In the process, this collective study examines diverse cultural contexts for action cinema's popularity, and the problems involved in the transnational study of globally popular forms suggesting that in order to grasp the history of Hong Kong action cinema's influence we need to bring out the differences as well as the links that constitute popularity.