Lau Kar-leung, a kung fu master who went from stuntman to movie director, has been honoured with a lifetime achievement award from the Hong Kong Film Awards.
Lau, 74, is the leader of the 'Lau Brothers', a family at the heart of the martial arts tradition that defined the city's film industry in the 1960s.
'Hong Kong movies are famous for their martial arts. It has everything to do with Lau,' the chairman of the film awards association, Gordon Chan Ka-seung, said yesterday in making the announcement.
Lau (pictured) is suffering from cancer but was expected to attend the ceremony on April 18.
Lau's kung fu goes back to the legendary Wong Fei-hung in the 19th century. Lau's father learned the art from master Lam Sai-wing, who belonged to Wong's faction.
Lau started off as a stuntman in the 1950s but switched to directing action films in the 1960s. Over the next decade, he became a core director for the Shaw Brothers Studio. The 36th Chamber of Shaolin saw the rise of his brother, actor Gordon Liu Chia-hui, who later appeared in Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill series.