#he ping

[rogue-wildcard]

i choose principles over power, and i do not bow to that which seeks to crush me or my kind

[cinemaronin]

Swordsmen in Double Flag Town (1991)

双旗镇刀客 Swordsmen in Double Flag Town (1991)  directed by He Ping

[cfensi]

Chen Wenqi at the Hong Kong Film Awards.

Posters, stills, photoshoots, and random photos that caught my eye this week.

Chen Duling

Wu Lei at the amusement park.

Fan Chengcheng

Zhang Han

Li Bingbing

Peking Opera artist and pop star Wang Peiyu’s ad for Chenguang pens (If you ever go to China, they have super cheap and smooth pens.)

Ni Ni by painter He Ping

Ni Ni by painter He Ping

Ni Ni by painter He Ping

Ni Ni by Feng Hai

  Friday Photos

Posters, stills, photoshoots, and random photos that caught my eye this week.

Friday Photos Posters, stills, photoshoots, and random photos that caught my eye this week.

[cinemaronin]

Red Firecracker, Green Firecracker (1994)

炮打双灯 Red Firecracker, Green Firecracker (1994)  directed by He Ping cinematography by  Lun Yang

[piano-sequenza]

Red Firecracker, Green Firecracker | Directed by He Ping | Cinematography: Yang Lun

[dramyhsturgis]

I was sorry to learn of the death of director He Ping last month. I’ve treated myself to a rewatch of his memorable wuxia/Western film Warriors of Heaven and Earth in tribute. (It’s pictured here with some of the other movies in my “films by or with Jiang Wen” collection.)

[morganstuart]

Jiang Wen: Eccentric Model of Knight-Errantry

I came across lovely context for understanding some noteworthy aspects of the film Warriors of Heaven and Earth (2003) in the chapter “Wuxia Between Nationalism and Transnationalism” from Chinese Martial Arts Cinema: The Wuxia Tradition, Second Edition (2015) by Stephen Teo. I’ll admit that I love this film, and the analysis below helps to explain why it “feels” different than comparable works I’ve seen. In addition, the “knight-errantry” comment applies very well, I think, to Jiang Wen’s leading role as the noble and morally steadfast Lieutenant Li (as well as Kiichi Nakai’s role as the dutiful emissary sent to take down Li).

First, he [director He Ping] sees wuxia as more of a Western in both geographic and cultural terms. What is interesting about his films is that they are generic and idiosyncratic, even eccentric models of knight-errantry. By seeking to move the genre away from the central plains and lush southern landscape of China and placing it firmly in the barren western geographic region along the path of the historic ‘Silk Road’, He’s vision of wuxia is that of a multicultural, multi-ethnic social order, which impacts on the genre aesthetically, reworking fashions/costumes and even styles of combat. In this respect, Warriors of Heaven and Earth is He’s most representative work, and the fact it looks more like a transnational epic than a nationalist wuxia movie is its greatest charm and appeal.      

Warriors is a marvellously executed wuxia-western adventure and it actually takes better advantage of the blockbuster mode to seamlessly integrate desert locations, sets of frontier towns and fortresses, props and artifacts, costumes mixing Western and Middle-Eastern styles, and even special effects, into its narrative. It is in short one of the few blockbusters in the current drive to marry wuxia with the epic form that actually works. The film tells the story of a Japanese warrior, originally an emissary sent to China during the Tang era, kept a virtual prisoner by the emperor but is given a chance to return to Japan on condition that he captures a mutineer, one Lieutenant Li (Jiang Wen)....

Just a bit more from Stephen Teo:

He Ping masterfully orchestrates his elements to construct an epic that evokes not only the wuxia but also the western, the desert adventure, and the shenguai-fantastic... Amazingly it pulls off the experiment in ‘combining realism and fantasy,’ as He Ping has described it. The director stages all the fight scenes realistically, indulging in the fantasy premise of the genre only very sparingly. Warriors differs from the historicist blockbusters of the Fifth Generation by being more sober-minded about fantasy but also by being more de-centric, locating the genre outside of its traditional domain. Its western locale is therefore more of an allegory of the transnational drive and imperatives of China in the age of globalisation, even if ultimately the film may be said to reinforce the historicist myth of wuxia through the fantastic premise of the Buddhist relic helping to bring about a long reign of peace over China during the Tang Dynasty.  

(ICYMI, Jiang Wen was injured during the shooting of this film.)

Thanks for reading! You can find more highlights from my Jiang Wen-related research in my other “Books on Baze” posts. 

[liveforfilms]

Changing Times: He Ping talks about The Promised Land

Changing Times: He Ping talks about The Promised Land

Aided by an interpreter Trevor Hogg had an opportunity to chat with He Ping about the challenges of making a contemporary film about life in China called The Promised Land…

A new cinematic offering from He Ping is not regular occurrence as the Chinese filmmaker has produced six movies over a period of 28 years.   The native of Beijing began his career making documentaries and directing plays…

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