Film Studies at Emory Presents “Red Heroine” with Live Musical Accompaniment by the Devil Music Ensemble
Edited and Produced by Wanda Yang Temko
Atlanta, GA – Red Heroine is the only surviving extant Chinese silent “Kung Fu” film left from the silent era and is a prime example of the terrifically popular Chinese swordplay genre (wuxia pian). A band of outlaws raids a village and kidnaps a maiden, causing the death of the young woman's grandmother. The captive maiden is rescued by a mysterious Daoist hermit and reemerges three years later as a full-fledged warrior, flying to the sky to revenge her grandmother's death. The film shows a young woman's transformation from abject victim to resolute warrior.