Shaolin Temple Documentaries

Wai Jia: The Kung Fu Forum Shaolin Kung Fu
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[QUOTE=GeneChing;900617]Suxi is referred to as Yongxin’s predecessor as abbot, but we know that wasn’t quite the case. There are other odd comments in the narration, like one that implies that wushu weapons are light because the monks abstain from killing.[/QUOTE]

i remember hearing some of the chinese tour guides over there telling all the chinese tourists, in chinese, standing in front of ven. suxi’s pagoda that he was abbot yongxin’s master. didnt get the “de xing yong yan heng” right. :rolleyes:

and as for the weapons, master deyang’s staff is the heaviest stick i have ever tried to swing around. about broke my own wrist. thats not to mention his hardcore straightsword and monkspade. they are far from light.

i’m always down for a good shaolin documentary though. thanks for the heads-up!

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[QUOTE=GeneChing;900617]It’s a gorgeous documentary - spectacular time lapse filming, dramatic slow motion of traditional and modern forms. You’d expect no less from National Geographic. I would love to get access to the cutting room floor footage, because there are a lot of scenes of monks executing traditional forms in the doc, but only short cuts. Surely they filmed the entire form and and then edited it down. Only Shaolin practitioners would want to watch the entire form. For the sake of a popular audience, just the short clip will do. But man, the complete forms filmed so professionally in HD - what a treasure![/QUOTE]

but…no doubt marked…

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There will be a new Shaolin doc coming out in spring, we helped the production during our last trip.

Working title “Kill Arman” (yes, weird): the doc, or better show, is centered around Arman, a finnish TV presenter, who travels to far away places to try various “dangerous” but fascinating things.

The Shaolin episode will have Arman travel to Shaolin, train for a few days at Shi De Yang school, explain Shaolin culture today (if they don’t cut too much this part should be good as we “steered” the project a lot) including footage of Shaolin and Fawang, the students training and various interviews with De Yang and his disciples (mostly me as I had decent english).

Finally Arman tests his newly acquired skills against one of the coaches. I won’t spoil it but let’s say that it is one of the more “traumatising” TV show endings. Arman thought it was great as it truly displayied the gap between a real fighter and an amateur … certainly willing to risk it all for entertainment! The coach was feeling REALLY bad but Arman did tell him 100 times to make sure he hits for real…

The finnish guys were super-respectful and very very good at photography and editing (seeing footage from other episodes) so hopefully the show will look great and do justice to Shaolin culture.

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Suxi was acting abbot, but never formally indoctrinated

Shaolin insiders know of the longstanding feud between the Yongxin and Suxi loyals, so it was really ironic to see Yongxin bow down to Suxi’s pagoda. For the Shaolin massive, that alone is worth viewing this doc. :wink: It was said that Suxi ruled the south and Yongxin the north, which referred to their political allies and where they resided inside the temple. For the record, it was actually Shi Xingzhen who preceded Yongxin as the official Abbot of Shaolin. We covered that in our Shi Xingzhen - Keeping Shaolin Alive: Shaolin’s 29th Abbot in our Shaolin Special 2000.

The wushu weapon thing was just odd. I think the documentary makers were reaching for something to resolve the old pacifist monks vs. warrior monks issue. There’s an almost culturalist problem with that. Almost every religion espouses peace. Almost every religion goes to battle. Why should Buddhism be an exception? It certainly isn’t in history, not even in modern events. But many Westerners believe it should be, despite parallels within Western religion. I felt this was fallout from dwelling on the biaoyenseng too much. Plenty of the senior monks work heavy weapons and Shaolin forge produces some rather heavy pieces. It’s just the biaoyenseng don’t use those.

One more thing I liked about the SotKFT was it took me someplace I’ve never been before at Shaolin - the security monitoring room. The entire temple is wired with cameras now. It’s a major tourist site, so the security cameras are a wise modern precaution, but a little surreal. There’s a scene in the video monitoring room, which I imagine is in the security section - that was all being restructured the last time I was there. I remember sneaking into the temple before it opened once. I guess I can’t do that anymore. :frowning:

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I’d like to see a documentary about the “purge” of traditional Ch’an/gongfu masters, the introduction of Pureland Buddhist monks to cover up the purge, and things like that…

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tonight

Secrets of the Kung Fu Temple Premieres Thursday, December 18, 2008, at 10 PM ET/PT

I highly encourage you all to tune in, not just for the sake of debate here, but mostly to show your support of martial arts programming on NGC, especially on Shaolin. NG has been dabbling with Shaolin as a subject. Justin Guariglia’s work is exemplary (he also did the cover shoot for our current Shaolin Special). How often has NG level photographers done covers for martial arts magazines? I can think of only one other time. :wink:

I look forward to tomorrow’s discussion here. :stuck_out_tongue:

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I enjoyed the documentary. Our school is going there in June so checking out the beautiful scenery just got me even more excited about going. I did find it kind of sad that the majority of the students have nothing more to look forward to except a life as a Kung Fu Teacher or a Bodyguard. Not that that is a bad thing, but there can only be so many kung fu teachers. It just reminds us to be thankful that we live where we do and have the opportunities and choices that we have.

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Song Shan is one of the two most picturesque mountains I’ve ever visited.

The other being Mian Shan in Shanxi.

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I caught only the end of a National Geographic special last night on Shaolin Kung FU. Did anyone else catch it? It detailed a little of the past, but mainly the current training and goals of a few of the monks, or monks-to-be, I assume implying that they were indicative examples of the norm now. I hope to catch a replay or on-demand or something to see the rest.

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I watched this show last night and enjoyed it. It showed some places I had never seen pictures of before. The training sequences were interesting and like Gene I would like to see what went onto the cutting room floor. I bet there was interesting stuff besides complete forms, too. The traveling monks/dance show for London was a little weird, but I would like to see the whole thing as it looked like they were putting a lot of work into it. The light weapons brought a chuckle as we all know those are for demo purposes and they really have some heavy weight stuff to train with and use that way. I was glad they picked a couple of students to follow and see their outcomes. The little guy will be great with his attitude. Couldn’t remember where the scene with the stamped out floor came from either. Interesting showing the chi demo. If you like martial arts and even have only a casual interest in Shaolin Temple then you would find this interesting.:slight_smile:

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I would like to see that London show too.

I’ve seen countless Shaolin shows. I’m always amused to see something new and different.

Anyone figure out which Jet Li movie clip they showed? It’s totally baffling me.

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jet li clip

it was “evil cult”

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Thanks Shaolindynasty!

I had to think about that for a while. I know it as Kung Fu Cult Master.

Evil Cult. lol. How ironic.

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This here?

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i have just uploaded Extreme Pilgrim:)

http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=2221984832027966161

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thanks, chanboxer. i enjoyed watching.

the monk with cowboy boots and the principal at tagou were some rather funny fellas. :slight_smile:

glad he got to see a bit of what real shaolin is through master dejian.

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Two more Chinatown DVDs

I saw these in S.F. Chinatown - I almost bought them (cheap at about $10 per) but I didn’t. Still a little low on dough postXmas…:o

Songshan Shaolin Temple - documentary by Gen Takahashi. Nice box.

Shaolin in the Wind - vid of the live stage show. We covered that in Kung Fu Ballet: The Tentative Debut of China’s New Show, Shaolin in the Wind By August West 2005 May/June

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Nat Geo vid on MySpace

It’s the same vid as posted above, but I’m now curious how much NG had to pay for that promo. MySpace is an interesting choice for their ad buck for this.

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Well, here’s an oversight

After starting this thread, Alex never added his own documentary. It has it’s own thread, of course, but it needs to be added here too, for archival sake.

The Real Shaolin by Alex Sebastian Lee

I actually came on here to add another doc that I caught just by chance on PBS last night (I skipped the Shaolin vs. Maori episode of Deadliest Warrior because I don’t have cable)

Catch this on your local PBS station.

Kung Fu Journey to the East
60-Minute Documentary (2006; airing now)

Explore the world of martial arts in China on a journey with two American Kung Fu students. Masters of China’s most renowned martial arts schools will share their knowledge and wisdom with these two determined learners. Instruction will provide a deeper understanding of this ancient Chinese philosophy and tradition, which combines exercise, self-defense, self-discipline, and art.

In this two-week journey, Kristi Jordan and Adam McArthur study a variety of martial arts forms, from Taiqi—a softer, internal martial art typical of Wudang Mountain— to harder, external styles attributed to the Shaolin Temple. How do Kung Fu classes in the U.S. prepare them for this challenge to mind, body, and spirit? Does a visit to the origins of this 1,500-year-old tradition and lessons with Chinese Masters affect their performance and increase their devotion to Kung Fu practice? This feature-length documentary will shed light on these questions, and provide depth and perspective to this ancient, but increasingly popular art form.

Note that this is the same production crew that did Riding the Rails in China mentioned earlier on this thread. It’s an Oakland-based company, total five&dime local as we say here.

Since it’s only a two-week journey and it covers Beijing, Wudang, Emei & Shaolin, only a little time is spent for the practitioner protagonists. They have to travel, train and visit the tourist sites, which leave only a short time for them to really absorb anything, so their evening hotel cam comments are rather fawning about the experience. I’m sure anyone on such a tour would have a great trip, and it seems that Kristi and Adam have the time of their lives, but dynamically, it comes off as more of a video postcard than anything else. It’s not very penetrating. That being said, it does feature some luminaries. They have a short audience with Abbot Shi Yongxin, who sells them on the idea that the monks meditate for 15 hours each day, and train under Shi Yanao and Shi Yanzhuang, who were just here for Shaolin Temple Day. They also meet with Wu Bin, who has pledged to come to our Tiger Claw’s KungFuMagazine.com Championship (shameless plug there).

But still, I’m guessing my time was better spent watching this than watching Deadliest Warrior…:rolleyes:

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I’m not sure this is actually concerning Shaolin Temple

It’s a new doc with Shaolin in the title. Perhaps someone can research Ehsan Shafiq a little more? I started watching some YouTube vids (he has his own channel) but lost interest.

Documentary Accepted into London Independent Film Festival!
Posted by VMproductions on Saturday, 27 March 2010

VMproductions are pleased to announce that our Documentary ‘Ehsan Shafiq: Afghan Shaolin’ have been accepted into the London Independent Film Festival 2010!

Ehsan Shafiq: Afghan Shaolin

“Kung Fu Master Ehsan Shafiq: Born in Kabul, Afghanistan he won numerous accolades but success also brought upon him danger. After several threats on his life and the war, he sought asylum in the UK and rebuilt his life”

Watch Ehsan in Action on his YouTube Channel:
http://www.youtube.com/user/EhsanShafiq

For more information on the Festival see the link below:
http://www.londonindependent.org/index.htm

What a week for VMproductions!!!