The Chinese wuxia (martial-arts) genre was never the same after Come Drink with Me. Set during the Ming Dynasty, King Hu’s breakthrough feature stars Cheng Pei-pei as Golden Swallow, a highly skilled swordswoman who teams up with a hard-drinking martial-arts mentor to save her brother from a clan of bandits. Featuring what would become Hu’s trademark style of tightly choreographed, splendorous setpieces, Come Drink with Me also established the genre’s standard for sword-wielding heroines, and inspired countless subsequent wuxia films, including Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (in which Cheng Pei-pei also stars) and Hou Hsiao-hsien’s The Assassin. Print courtesy of the American Genre Film Archive.


This screening is part of our free weekly double features this summer to celebrate Film at Lincoln Center’s 50th anniversary. Free tickets will be distributed on a first-come, first-served basis starting one hour prior to each screening. Limit one ticket per person, subject to availability.

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