Last year's screening of Peter Chan Ho-sun's 2011 martial arts action film (known as in Hong Kong) was a big hit at the New York Asian Film Festival (NYAFF), an annual event co-organised by Subway Cinema, the Film Society of Lincoln Centre and the Japan Society.
That's no surprise to festival organiser Goran Topalovic: although the NYAFF screens a diverse array of commercial and genre films from across Asia, martial arts films from Hong Kong are still the most consistently popular works, he says.
"There is always a lot of interest when we show a martial arts film," he says just before the start, on Friday, of the 12th edition of the festival founded by a New York-based collective of Asian film fans. "Whether it's a modern action film, a well-regarded classic, a Shaw Brothers movie, or a film from the 1990s, we are guaranteed an audience. In most people's minds here, Hong Kong cinema is martial arts cinema. We have never seen a dip in interest - we can always count on a martial arts film doing well at the box office, and getting a lot of attention from the audience and the press."
This year's NYAFF, which runs until July 15, is screening two Ip Man films: 2010's and ght (2013), both directed by Herman Yau Lai-to, who will be attending with screenwriter Erica Li Man.
This follows the 13-film retrospective last week celebrating Jackie Chan's martial arts prowess, "The Jackie Chan Experience". But plans to screen Wong Kar-wai's fell through because the US version of the film was not ready.
Also in the festival programme is Bruce Lee's , co-produced by Golden Harvest and Warner Brothers in 1973, and directed by Robert Clouse. Lee died the year the film was released, but his star still shines bright in the US. "Bruce Lee is still an icon here, and our audience is well aware of the role that he played in popularising kung fu films here and in Hong Kong," Topalovic says.
