A work in constant progress (and occasional regress).
Release Date:
March 13, 1968
Original Title:
樊梨花
Alternate Titles:
Fan Lei-Fa, the Female General
Fan Li-Fa
Genres:
Drama | History | Music
Production Companies:
Gin Lei Film Company
Production Countries:
Hong Kong
Ratings / Certifications:
N/A
Runtime: 99
Centring on the legend of the four ancient Chinese heroines, the film was a novelty for audiences at the time, as the singing performance was in Cantonese and used huangmei operatic rhythms—a popular trend in the 1960s, yet it retained traditional flavours by using operatic luogu percussion in the battle scenes. ‘Movie-fan princess' Connie Chan Po-chu not only sings Cantonese song and huangmei tone solos in the film, she also wows the audience by taking up the doumadanrole for the first time as the Tang dynasty female general Fan Lei-fa, showing off her superb operatic martial skills, together with Shum Chi-wah, inherited from Peking opera master Fen Ju Hua. Yu Kai's weaponry prowess and renowned female comedian Tam Lan-hing cross-dressing as a male general are also brilliant in this gem.
Assistant Director:
Wong King-Wan
Cinematography:
Ngai Hoi-Fung
Costume Designer:
Lai Chu
Director:
Fung Chi-Kong
Editor:
Yu Shun
Hair Designer:
Tsui Kam-Lun
Makeup Artist:
Tse Tsak-Yuen
Music:
Poon Cheuk
Music Arranger:
Poon Cheuk
Producer:
Lee Long-Koon
Screenplay:
Fung Chi-Kong
Set Designer:
Chan King-Sam
Most data and links to images for the Movies section come from TheMovieDB (TMDB).
Additional data for Film Titles come from The Open Movie Database (OMDb).
At least one plug-in comes from IMDb.
Data are -- hey, it's a plural -- subject to the limitations of their sources. (For example, TMDB search results currently max out at 20.) I am limiting myself to free data sources for now. (No, a "free trial" is not free.)
While much of the above data are retrieved directly from outside APIs and other such sources, data from American Film Institute (AFI) and British Film Institute (BFI) were manually entered the old fashioned way into a MySQL database. Re BFI I took the following liberties:
Regarding profile removals and data corrections:
Filtering is applied here to film projects flagged as "adult" by TheMovieDB. Pending "popular demand" I am contemplating a login and profile system with preferences (such as whether to allow adult images to appear) and permissions (such as data entry).
Whereas the overall purpose of this website is to serve as a personal demo/portfolio/workshop of web and data skills, this Movies section is not meant to compete with or substitute for far more definitive movie websites.
Whether or not he still clings to an award which he won in 1986 as a film critic for his college's newspaper, Jeffrey Hartmann is not responsible for the texts of overviews and biographies supplied by external data sources.