This weekend thousands of kung fu aficionados will gather on the Rose Kennedy Greenway to view Chinese-language movies, thanks to Films at the Gate (FATG), a project co-founded and still curated by Lower Mills resident Jean Lukitsh.
Lukitsh, now a kung fu teacher and respected historian of the movie genre, traced how she became involved in this nine-year-old tradition of screening martial arts classics in Mandarin or Cantonese (with English subtitles) under the stars.
“I came to Boston from Pittsburgh in 1978 to study tai chi in Chinatown with Master Bow Sim Mark, one of the best known female kung fu teachers in the world. Through a tai chi classmate, I got a job as a movie projectionist at two of the Chinatown cinemas, the Star on Essex Street and the China on Beach Street.”
There, Lukitsh worked projection at the theaters from early 1979 until mid-1986 when home videos made reel-changing technology obsolete. After receiving an MSN in gerontology nursing from the Institute of Health Professions at Massachusetts General Hospital in 1990, she worked for more than 20 years as a nurse in a South End nursing home that served the Chinatown community.
“My interest in gerontology arose from my tai chi studies, especially its role in healthy aging. I currently teach a tai chi class for seniors at Youville House in Cambridge, and teach classes in tai chi, pakua, and internal weapon styles at the Bow Sim Mark Tai Chi Arts Association School on Lincoln Street in Chinatown. I’m also about to launch a freelance service offering corporate tai chi classes.
“While working at the Chinatown theaters, I fell in love with kung fu movies. I was also lucky enough to be exposed to some of the best kung fu practitioners in the world through my studies with Master Mark, which gave me an appreciation of the art underlying the films. About twelve years ago, I started writing for a website called kungfucinema.com. Eventually I wrote a blog, Electric Shadows, devoted to the ‘secret history of kung fu movies.’ Starting with the silent era when the Shanghai of the 1920s was China’s Hollywood, Kung fu movies incited so much anarchic passion in audiences that the government banned them in 1931 and filmmakers moved to Hong Kong. The research I did for my blog has been collected in an ebook, “Electric Shadows: The Secret History of Kung Fu Movies,” available on Amazon.”
In 2006, the Asian Community Development Corporation approached Lukitsh to program an event in Chinatown recreating the experience of the old audiences in the Star, China, and Pagoda theaters of the 70s and 80s. FATG, now in its ninth year, invites Chinatown martial arts schools to perform live before the screenings, but the experience is about more than kung fu; it’s about honoring the local community, and the generations of immigrants and their traditions, that make it so distinctive.”
Tomorrow (Fri., Sept. 12), the 2014 series kicks off with “Fearless Hyena,” an early Jackie Chan comedy. “It was one of the movies I screened back at the Star Cinema around 1979 or 1980.” the Dot resident recalled. “It has some hilarious action sequences, including one fight where Jackie is pretending to be a woman. This movie was out of print for a long time. I looked for a couple of years before finding an Australian release on eBay, digitally re-mastered and in the original Cantonese with English subtitles, just like the print we showed at the Star Cinema.”
On Saturday, FATG screens “The Woman Knight of Mirror Lake,” a 2011 Chinese/ Hong Kong biographical film about the life of Chinese feminist revolutionary and poet Qiu Jin and her involvement in uprisings against the Qin dynasty in Anhui province.
On Sunday, the series concludes with a 1966 film, “Come Drink With Me.” This Run Run Shaw classic is considered by some to be one of the best Hong Kong films ever made. In Cheng Pei Pei’s breakout role, the heroine, Golden Swallow, goes on a mission to free her brother from kidnappers.
