Lau Kar-leung with Walter Benjamin: storytelling, authenticity, film performance and martial arts pedagogy
Article
White, L. 2014. Lau Kar-leung with Walter Benjamin: storytelling, authenticity, film performance and martial arts pedagogy. Journalism Media and Cultural Studies (JOMEC). 5, pp. 1-17. https://doi.org/10.18573/j.2014.10277
Type | Article |
---|---|
Title | Lau Kar-leung with Walter Benjamin: storytelling, authenticity, film performance and martial arts pedagogy |
Authors | White, L. |
Abstract | This recent article considers how we might understand the politics of corporeal identification that stands at the heart of the pleasures of kung fu cinema, and how might this be built on the forms of pedagogy – the ‘embodied knowledge’ – of the martial arts themselves. Might the forms of visual-corporeal communication at the heart of ‘kung fu’ (as cinema and physical practice), harbour emancipatory impulses, even if – or paradoxically because – they are rooted in a ‘premodern’ past? In order to argue that this is indeed the case, this essay examines the work of Lau Kar-leung, one of kung fu cinema’s most innovative auteurs during the 1960s and ’70s. Lau’s films, made in the wake of the countercultural and anticolonial turmoil of 1960s and ’70s Hong Kong, are posited as part of a culture of resistance with their protagonists (also ostensibly his own martial arts ancestors) in revolt against Manchurian occupation and semicolonial domination by the West, connecting to a history of the Chinese martial arts as involved in resistance from below. |
Keywords | Lau Kar-leung, Walter Benjamin, Storytelling, Authenticity, Film Performance, Martial Arts Pedagogy |
Research Group | Diasporas |
Visual Culture and Curating cluster | |
Publisher | Cardiff University |
Journal | Journalism Media and Cultural Studies (JOMEC) |
ISSN | 2049-2340 |
Publication dates | |
01 Jun 2014 | |
Publication process dates | |
Deposited | 12 Sep 2014 |
Output status | Published |
Accepted author manuscript | License |
Digital Object Identifier (DOI) | https://doi.org/10.18573/j.2014.10277 |
Language | English |
https://repository.mdx.ac.uk/item/84x61
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