Message from eamador

[Anonymous]

I sent this email to Clay and am posting his answer:

Do you know of any films that represent either the Tang, Song, Yuen, or Ming? I know the Tang dynasty is becoming very popular in China. I know "Hero" reflects the Qin which is representative of Imperial periods. Just wondered if there was anything else you know about.

from Clay:

There are many mini-series about some of these periods but few films. One that is set in the Tang, but based on a Ming novel, is Journey to the West. Another novel turned into a mini-series is Outlaws of the Marsh. It’s set in the Song, but was also written in the Ming. The Chinese name is Shuihu zhuan. Pearl Buck translated it as All Men are Brothers. I am not certain these are available with sub-titles, but I think they might be. Neither of the films are really historical epics though both have some basis in China’s past. A Chinese monk did travel to India to study Buddhism in the land where it was born (this is part of premise of Journey to the West, a novel full of magic, translated and abridged by Arthur Waley as Monkey) and there were bandit gangs who sometimes built local followings by defending farmers and antagonizing rapacious officials (one of the themes of Outlaws of the Marsh, which is heavy on martial arts).

Of course, documentaries about these periods are more plentiful. You can locate some of these in the film index that Miranda and I worked on years ago:

http://www.international.ucla.edu/eas/web/asiafilm-web.htm

An even richer database now exists at the University of Illinois:

http://www.aems.uiuc.edu/
[Edit by="eamador on Jan 11, 4:48:48 PM"][/Edit]