Actor Liao Fan plays the title role in The Master, a martial arts thriller that pays tribute to Bruce Lee. The movie is set to open across the country on Dec 11. [Photo provided to China Daily]
While most directors rely on computers to transform actors into superheroes, Xu Haofeng shoots his martial arts flicks in a more traditional way through training the star to be a real kung fu master.
This meant a tough schedule for Liao Fan, the veteran actor starring in his forthcoming martial arts thriller, The Master, which is set to open across the country on Dec 11.
The movie recently beat rivals, such as Hou Hsiao-hsien's The Assassin, to claim the best action choreography prize at the just-concluded 52nd Golden Horse Awards in Taiwan.
During its 92-day shoot last year, Liao was asked to get up at 4 am every day in an isolated location in rural Beijing.
One bowl of porridge is all he got for breakfast, as a vegetarian diet was believed to be the best to keep the 41-year-old actor in peak physical condition.
A more interesting fact was that Liao's martial arts coach was not a professional sportsman, but the director himself who learned his kung fu skills from his grandfather and an apprentice of kung fu master Yip Man (1893-1972).
Yip's most well-known apprentice was the Chinese-American megastar Bruce Lee.
And Xu has always been fascinated by Lee.
From the time he was an adolescent, Xu has dreamed of making a movie with someone resembling Lee who had mastery of Yip's Wing Chun form of kung fu.
Speaking of his fascination with Lee, Xu, who was on a promotional tour recently, says: "Lee had a huge role in letting the world know about Chinese movies and the unique kung fu genre. It is a big pity that only a few filmmakers could follow his footsteps."
Director Xu Haofeng shoots his martial arts flicks in a more traditional way through training the star to be a real kung fu master. [Photo provided to China Daily]
The title role in The Master-a practitioner of the Wing Chun from southern China's Guangdong province ambitious to earn a reputation in northern China's onetime martial arts hub, Tianjin-can be seen as a salute to Lee.
For Xu, 42, another dream woven into the film is to revive the glory of Chinese wuxia movies, a genre which was very popular in domestic and overseas markets a couple of decades ago.
The efforts can be seen in the casting of Liao, who gained recognition in the West thanks to his Silver Bear prize.
The Black Coal, Thin Ice star was the first Chinese mainland actor to win the best-actor award at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2014, one of Europe's top three movie events.
Veteran actresses Song Jia and Jiang Wenli also star the movie.
Besides its overseas debut, The Master also garnered attention from foreign distributors at the recently concluded American Film Market-Hollywood's largest trade show, says Li Xia, the producer.
Xu's previous martial arts titles, The Sword Identity (2011) and Arrow Arbitration (2014), have won critical acclaim at several international film festivals.
The consensus about Xu's work is that he has revived a martial arts genre which highlights real fights, unlike most wuxia movies which rely on wires and computer-generated technology to create a supernatural effect.
A professor at Beijing Film Academy and a best-selling novelist, Xu is from a Chinese generation born in the 1970s, a group that had few opportunities to see their cultural icons on the big screen when they were growing up.
For that generation, the first Hollywood blockbuster officially released in Chinese mainland theaters was The Fugitive in 1994.
Before that, Chinese moviegoers could access American movies only through videotape.
Paying a tribute to Lee is one way of making up for lost opportunities.
