CHICAGO, Sept. 22 (Xinhua) -- Asian Pop-up Cinema, an Asian film festival in Chicago, pays tribute to master wuxia (literally martial heroes) filmmaker King Hu by featuring his digitally restored classics starting Wednesday.
King Hu, 1932-1997, was a Chinese film director and actor. He is best known for directing various wuxia films in the 1960s and 1970s.
Starting Wednesday, four of Hu's films, digitally restored, are available to stream online for a week. These films, namely "Dragon Inn," "A Touch of Zen," "Raining in the Mountain" and "Legend of the Mountain," are considered classics of the genre.
Sophia Wong Boccio, founder and executive director of Asian Pop-up Cinema, told Xinhua that King Hu was "a world-renowned director" and his work was an inspiration for Ang Lee's "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" in 2000 and Zhang Yimou's "House of Flying Daggers" in 2004.
"King Hu was to martial arts what John Ford was to the western," said TwitchFilm, a Canadian news and film review outlet.
"Dragon Inn" will also be shown on the large screen at ChiTown Movies drive-in venue on Sept. 28.
"It would be sensational to see this martial arts classic in person at the drive-in," said Boccio.
All these films are having their premieres in the Midwest of the United States.
Asian Pop-up Cinema runs two film festivals annually, one in the spring, and the other in the fall. This 13th season, which started on Sept. 15, features 30 films from China, South Korea, Japan, India, Canada and the United States. Due to the pandemic, these films will be screened by means of streaming online, theaters and drive-in. The festival will run through Oct. 12. Enditem