Associate Professor of East Asian Languages and Literatures Zhuoyi Wang gave an invited talk remotely for Chinese Language School at Middlebury College on July 11. Titled “The Legends and Demise of Liminal Heroes: Diasporic Nationalist Figures in Tsui Hark’s Films,” the talk reviews renowned Hong Kong director Tsui Hark’s long career with a focus on several of his films, including Dangerous Encounters of the First Kind (1980), Zu Warriors from the Magic Mountain (1983), A Better Tomorrow III: Love & Death in Saigon (1989), and The Taking of Tiger Mountain (2014).
Wang demonstrated how Tsui uses his signature skills to construct alluring cinematic shapes for a liminal and diasporic “Chinese” heroism, and how the liminality reflects Tsui’s personal and artistic navigation across multiple national and ideological borders.
