Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting

Black cinema's 1970s Kung Fu explosion

Black Film Archive is a living register of Black films from 1915 to 1979 currently streaming. This Substack is its blog. Thank you for being here.

Cinema cannot be divorced from the aesthetic and cultural conditions that birthed it. Through the 1970s, Blaxploitation Kung Fu films lies a visual repository of cross-cultural marriage. Premiering to a crowd of Black and Asian American moviegoers in New York City, the dubbed 1972 Five Fingers of Death and the steady stream of Hong Kong imports that followed delivered a kung-fu craze that the 1970s are synonymous with. From this emerging influence, a culture was forming from the margins; Black Americans were translating the social and aesthetic codes of the Hong Kong film imports to every aspect of American popular culture.

In the wake of the rising political and cultural Black consciousness post the Civil Rights Movement, Blaxploitation films explore Black people’s desires for agency, power, and self-identification. Those desires manifest with the fantastic in a world where Black characters control their image and seek revenge for the oppression they have faced. This cinema of Black fantastical resistance started from the radical margins of Black independent cinema and was eventually engulfed and simplified by Hollywood studios to save the industry from financial demise. 

Similarly, Kung Fu cinema’s overt focus on the fantastic through narratives of transformation and resistance to the man, offered Black moviegoers non-white heroes who were using rigid discipline as a tool to overcome and seek justice.

If the very essence of Blaxploitation films were to challenge the world order, the creative marriage between Kung Fu and Blaxploitation offered global imagery of resistance. Here there was visual solidarity between Black people and all people fighting against the man. Here there was an examination of the man’s role in global oppression. With stars like the legendary Jim Kelly, the man had a foe to be reckoned with.

The Blaxploitation Kung Fu explosion produces a cinematic language that is still useful today. It breaks the barriers of multiculturalism — siloed ethnic communities existing in contrast to the ‘dominant society’ — framework American cinema is often clinging to and brings forward the idea that fascism and imperialism is an enemy shared between all that choose to fight it. Our histories and our struggles overlap. The countless Blaxploitation Kung Fu films are a memorialization of that, and we too, must remember. The ever-growing list of Blaxploitation Kung Fu films on Black Film Archive can be found here.

Enter the Dragon (1973)

This Hong Kong-made Hollywood wonder co-starring Jim Kelly (pictured) as an American working with Bruce Lee on a pulse-raising mission to stop a shady crime lord. Often cited as one of the most influential works of Fung Ku cinema, the film’s style, tone, and story continue to influence today’s movies.

Black Belt Jones (1974)

Black Belt Jones takes the “hero protects his community from the mob” trope and gives it life in a way only Jim Kelly could. The mafiosos have met their match with Kelly’s Jones in a film jam-packed with one-liners and ass kicks.

Bamboo Gods and Iron Men (1974)

When Cal Jefferson, a big-time American fighter, played by James Iglehart, ventures to Hong Kong for a honeymoon with his new bride (Shirley Jackson), they find trouble after purchasing a prize Buddha statue.

TNT Jackson (1974)

After Diana Jackson’s (Jean Bell) brother is suspected to be dead, she travels to Hong Kong to find his killers and avenge his death in this bad ass role.

The Black Dragon’s Revenge (1975)

Starring martial arts genius Ron Van Clief, this film centers Van Clief and other martial-artists-turned-actors fictional avenging for the untimely real life death of Bruce Lee. In a Hong Kong-based quest, the men fight for answers.

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P.S - I was just named the inaugural Connecting Digital Communities Initiative scholar-in-residence by the Library of Congress. I’ll be in residency at the Library for the next two years. Learn more here.

Until soon, friends!