King Hu: A Poetics of Zen

An ambitious project, box-office failure, cinefile phenomenon and a canonical piece of art. That’s the journey of King Hu’s wuxia film A Touch of Zen in a nutshell. Hu’s three hours long feature will serve as a stepping stone for introducing the work of the filmmaker who always confronted genre conventions in order to reach the effects like no one else. Besides Hu’s exceptional career, we will also discuss the genre trends in Thai and Hong Kong production of the 1960s and 1970s.