Shot in Taiwan and narrated in the form of a fictional memoir, The Butterfly Murders , Tsui Hark’s striking and mesmerizing debut, both subverts and re-invents the longstanding tradition of swordplay/martial arts films by structuring its plot as a detective film (with doses of Hitchcockian suspense) and staging its kung-fu sequences under the umbrella of “science”, i.e. every single kick and punch, or flying in the air, can be fully explained by the law of physics. The story concerns with a series of brutal attacks at the much revered Shum’s Fortress, leading to the deaths of almost every member of the clan. The person to solve all these mysteries turns out to be a literary scholar who knows nothing about kung-fu. Chan King-sam designed the film and remote-controlled the building of the main set, the Shum’s Fortress, from his Hong Kong office in the Shaw Brothers Studio, whose exclusive contract with Chan prevented him from being credited. Still he did a magnificent job, as always, by merging the classical and the futuristic into some of the most fantastic visuals ever seen in the genre, only to be surpassed a few years later by his next collaboration with Tsui Hark in Zu: The Warriors from the Magic Mountain (1983).

16/9

(Sun)

7:30pm

Cinema, Hong Kong Film Archive

18/11

(Sun)

4:00pm

Cinema, Hong Kong Film Archive