TO SHOOT OR TO BE SHOT (FOR SHAW MOVIES)

The DVD era is apparently over for Shaw Brothers movies in France. I had the chance to collaborate with the two French distribution companies who released 58 Shaw titles in DVD between 2004 and 2007 (46 for and 12 for ), but the last few years, the DVD sells weren’t as successful as expected, and I was kind of victim of this situation.

My last Shaw French DVD extra features in 2007  Indeed, the last six DVD extra features that I started (the interviews were already shot) were cancelled by and will probably never be released : Ku Feng 谷峰 interview about The Kung Fu Instrustor 教頭 (1979), Shu Kei 舒琪 about

Men From Monastery 少林子弟 (1974), Chu King-wei (from Fantasia film Festival) about The Pirate 大海盜 (1973), Collin Geddes (from Toronto International Film Festival) about

Man of Iron 仇連環 (1972), action director Yuen Cheung-yan 袁祥仁 about The Duel 大決鬥 (1971) and Cho Young-jung (from Pusan International Film Festival) about Chung Chang-wha Temptress of a Thousand Faces 千面魔女 (1969), and Paul Fonorroff about Griffin Yueh Feng 岳楓 carreer, for the French DVD of Trilogy of Swodsmanship 群英會  (1972).

  French DVD cover of TEMPTRESS OF A THOUSAND FACES  Concerning ), who bought 16 Shaw titles from Celestial Pictures, they delayed indefinitely the last four movies planned in 2005, Invincible Shaolin 南少林與北少林 (1978), Two Champions of Shaolin 少林與武當  (1980), The Iron Bodyguard  大刀王五 (1973) and All Men Are Brothers  蕩寇誌 (1973). Maybe the two Shaolin titles will be released in a near future… maybe not.

So what’s next ? Surprisingly,

decided to buy 180 new Shaw Brothers titles (!) but only for the Video On Demand market. Moreover, they choose to release not only martial arts movies like they did before for their DVD ( Temptress of a Thousand Faces was the only Shaw modern action movie released in France by Wild Side, the other 45 titles were kung-fu or swordplay movies), but a lot of different genres…

  Tina Ti and Tsung Hua in Li Han-hsiang’sTHE WARLORD There will be Erotic movies (Li Han-hsiang and Lui Kei movies mostly), a few Huangmei diao (including the timeless classic,

The Love Eterne 梁山伯與祝英台), exploitation movies ( Sexy Killer 毒后秘史 ,

Bamboo House of Dolls 女集中營…).  And for the martial arts films, there will be almost all the movies directed  Chang Cheh 張徹, Chu Yuan 楚原)  and Liu Chia-liang 劉家良 which were not released on DVD in France. So recently, I started to watch (or rewatch) all those movies and doing researches to write about them for  (summaries, production notes, stories background, anecdotes etc…). 

  Chen Ping in SEXY KILLER(a.k.a. THE DRUG CONNECTION)Recently, I was asked by Filmoline, a VOD company who plan to release several Shaw titles from Wild Side catalogue, if I was interested to present some of the movies. Of course I accepted, even if I don’t feel comfortable at all in front of a camera.  So ironically, after having interviewed and filmed so many people about Shaw movies, I’m now the one who’s shot to talk about Shaw movies.

  Old American poster of THE ONE-ARMED SWORDSMAN

Concretely, I’ve to write a few minutes speeches for each movie (introduction and conclusion) and reading them with a prompter (which is cool). Until now I’ve worked two afternoon with Filmoline and presented 12 movies that I knew very well, since I’ve done documentaries about them before, like The 8 Diagram Pole Fighter五郎八卦棍(1983), The One-Armed Swordsman 獨臂刀 (1967) , Killer Clans流星蝴蝶劍 (1976), The Fourteen Amazons 十四女英豪 (1972) etc… I hope I’ll do more very soon.

French DVD cover of THE 8 DIAGRAM POLE FIGHTER Here are some pictures of my second day of shooting, on February 18th, 2008, with the crew I’m working with : Clara-Nour Chaponot(Production manager), Sarah Aubert (Make-Up) and

Etienne Viansson Ponte(Cameraman / Editor).

Frédéric Ambroisine (February 29th, 2008)