Dragons, Ninjas, and Kickboxers: The Minor Transnational Action Films of IFD

• In Event: Cinematic Transnationalism and East Asia

Abstract

This paper aims to present a preliminary study of IFD Films and Arts (aka Asso Asia Films), a fascinating but little-known company from Hong Kong specializing in low-cost, transnational English-language martial arts and action films. Founded by Joseph Lai in 1973, IFD produced hundreds of films during the 1970s and 1980s, which covered a wide variety of action subgenres: bruceploitation and other types of kung fu films, many of which were co-productions with South Korean companies and featured Korean action stars (Dragon Lee, Hwang Jang-lee, Casanova Wong, etc.); ninja films, a popular trend in world cinema following the spectacular success of Enter the Ninja (Menahem Golan, 1981); martial arts tournament films in the style of the kickboxing flicks of Jean-Claude Van Damme; and so forth. I argue that these rather obscure films emerged out of profound changes in the global film and media markets, including the kung fu craze associated with Bruce Lee and the emergence of home video as a mass culture industry). Despite their limited production values and low cultural and critical status, they constituted a major part in the transnational cultural flows and formations of an increasingly globalized world. Transnationalism in cinema, then, does not rest exclusively with the big-budget, high-visibility films (such as Hollywood blockbusters); the marginal, less visible films are no less a border-crossing force, albeit one that operates on a different logic and takes significantly different forms. It is precisely this “minor” transnational mode, in both industrial and aesthetic terms, that I want to explore in this paper.

Author

• Man-Fung Yip, University of Oklahoma