ABSTRACT
Wuxia film is one of the most popular Sinophone film genres which have the ability to cross language and culture barriers and to form a type of mass culture which can circulate throughout the world, becoming one of the central mediums for carrying memories and articulating identity. The setting of wuxia films is the imaginary world of jianghu 江湖 which presents limitless possibilities.
This chapter studies the three contemporary Sinophone wuxia films, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Wo hu cang long 臥虎藏龍), directed by the Taiwan-born Hollywood director Ang Lee 李安; Hero (Ying xiong 英雄), directed by the Chinese director Zhang Yimou 張藝謀; and The Grandmaster (Yi dai zong shi 一代宗師), directed by the Hong Kong director Wong Kar-wai 王家衛, with the underlying symbolic meaning of national representation of three individual regions. How do these films present hidden history and develop new ethics and collective identities by exploring universal human values? How do they create a place for lively and active cultural discourse by incorporating more diverse thinking along the lines of knowledge, power, ethics, and personal experience?
