How kung fu icons like Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan became a hit in America explored in Iron Fists and Kung Fu Kicks
- Netflix documentary looks at the first Hong Kong kung fu films to make their mark in America and how they were adapted, promoted and received
- Director Serge Ou and writer Grady Hendrix also explore the huge influence films had on African-American and hip-hop culture
Martial arts are an integral part of Chinese culture, but in the US, their spiritual and cultural elements have often been divorced from their practical applications.
In their energetic and entertaining documentary Iron Fists and Kung Fu Kicks, which will start streaming on Netflix in December, director Serge Ou and writer Grady Hendrix relate the history of Hong Kong kung fu films, with a strong focus on how they were adapted, promoted and received in the US. The result makes for fascinating viewing.
Iron Fists and Kung Fu Kicks also shows how opportunistic US distributors promoted martial arts films as salacious and exotic, dubbed them nonsensically, and shoddily recut them to milk the movies for every last buck possible.
In the days before streaming and video, the only place to see films apart from on broadcast television was at the cinema.
In the 1960s, although Hong Kong films were popular all over Asia, little was known about them in the US. Martial arts films made their way into America by screening in theatres in Chinatowns, says Hendrix, a long-time commentator on Hong Kong films, and a founder of the New York Asian Film Festival.