Kung fu film (Chinese: 功夫片; pinyin: GÅngfu pià n; Jyutping: Gung1fu1pin3) is a subgenre of martial arts films and Hong Kong action cinema set in the contemporary period and featuring realistic martial arts. It lacks the fantasy elements seen in wuxia, a related martial arts genre that uses historical settings based on ancient China. Swordplay is also less common in kung-fu films than in wuxia and fighting is done through unarmed combat.
Kung fu films are an important product of Hong Kong cinema and the West, where it was exported. Studios in Hong Kong produce both wuxia and kung fu films.
The kung fu genre was born in Hong Kong as a backlash against the supernatural tropes of wuxia. The wuxia of the period, called shenguai wuxia, combined shenguai fantasy with the martial arts of wuxia. Producers of wuxia depended on special effects to draw in larger audiences like the use of animation in fight scenes. The popularity of shenguai wuxia waned because of its cheap effects and fantasy cliches, paving way for the rise of the kung fu film. The new genre still shared many of the traits of wuxia. Kung fu protagonists were exemplars of chivalry akin to the ancient youxia, the knight-errants of Chinese wuxia fiction.
The oldest film in the genre, The Adventures of Fong Sai-yuk (Part 1: 方世玉打擂å°; Part 2: 方世玉二å·ä¹‹èƒ¡æƒ 乾打機房), is a 1938–39 two-part movie about the adventures of folk hero Fong Sai-yuk. No surviving copies of the film exist. A series of films that dramatized the life of Wong Fei-hung, a historical Cantonese martial artist, was another early pioneer of the genre. The first two films of the Wong series, directed by Wu Pang and starring Kwan-Tak Hing, were released in 1949. The major innovation of the Wong Fei-hung films was its focus on realistic fighting or zhen gongfu, a departure from earlier wuxia films. The fights were still choreographed, but were designed to be more believable.Jet Li played Wong in a later revival of the series in 1990s, Tsui Hark's Once Upon a Time in China, and also Fong in the movie Fong Sai-yuk.
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