Widely regarded as the greatest martial arts epic of all time, A Touch of Zen won awards worldwide (including at Cannes), smashed box-office records and had an incalculable influence on the genre as a whole.

An unambitious painter named Gu (Shih Jun) lives with his mother in the vicinity of an abandoned mansion rumoured to be haunted. In actuality, the mansion has become a hiding place for the warrior Yang (Hsu Feng) and her own mother, both taking refuge following the assassination of their loyal minister father by the wicked eunuch Wei of East Chamber. After the eunuch sends an army to pursue the escapees, the group fortify the mansion with traps and false intimations of the terrifying ghosts within. But later, things take an even more unsettling turn…

Famed for its iconic set pieces, including the central bamboo forest battle, A Touch of Zen is one of cinema’s truly peerless action sagas and the precursor par excellence of such modern wuxia films as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and House of Flying Daggers.

Duration:
195 minutes

Translated title:
Xia nü

Languages:
Mandarin

Subtitles:
Full English

Country of origin:
Hong Kong and Taiwan

Year of production:
1971

This screening has no adverts or trailers and starts at the advertised time