Taiwanese filmmaker Giddens Ko, presenting “Kung Fu” at the Far East Film Festival on Saturday, revealed that Stephen Chow contributed to the film’s development and reflected on the more than decade-long journey required to bring his most technically ambitious project to screen.
Speaking on a panel moderated by Kevin Ma, Ko and his longtime collaborator Kai Ko – who stars in “Kung Fu” and wrote, produced and acts in “I Blew Out the Candles Before Making a Wish,” which has its world premiere at the festival Sunday – discussed the pair’s 15-year working relationship, the demands of wuxia filmmaking and their respective next projects.
Ko adapted “Kung Fu” from his own novel, written some 25 years ago, and first attempted to shoot it as his second feature around 2013. Fresh off the commercial success of his debut, “You’re the Apple of My Eye,” he pulled back from the project, attributing the retreat to an excess of confidence.
“I was so happy with the success of that story,” Ko said. “Right away when I got into this novel, I said, wow, this is a martial art, it’s kung fu. Everybody would love it.”
The abandoned project stayed with him. Ko described it as a creative wound he eventually resolved by returning to it alongside collaborators who shared the same history with the material. The finished film – which he described as Taiwan’s largest-budgeted production – incorporates footage from classic wuxia works. These clips, Ko noted, are not simple homages but narrative threads planted early in the story.
“Those classic clips at the beginning, they are not just being there because they were classic clips,” Ko said. “They were actually clues laying down the foundation for you to see the future character.”
Ko’s conception of the wuxia genre centers on imagination as a martial force. “Wuxia is not just action choreography,” he said. “Wuxia is really talking about stretching the audience imagination when you watch it.” To illustrate the spectrum, Ko contrasted Jackie Chan’s grounded physicality with the more heightened combat of Jet Li’s Wong Fei-hung films, where movement begins to exceed what the body could plausibly achieve – placing “Kung Fu” firmly in the latter tradition. He cited “The Matrix” as a structural touchstone, specifically the idea that a protagonist empowered by belief can transcend the rules of a constructed world. Ko also confirmed he showed the script directly to Stephen Chow – whose “Kung Fu Hustle” loomed large in the discussion – to talk through choreography and story.
Kai Ko, making his fourth film with Giddens, said the collaboration’s dynamic remained largely unchanged despite the production’s scale. The actor has grown into a presence in Giddens’ post-production process, a development the director welcomes. “He inspired me a lot,” Giddens said. “He’s no longer just a presence. He’s there, participated in a lot of ideas we discussed.”
Having directed his own debut, “Bad Education” – written by Giddens – Kai Ko said the experience reshaped his approach to acting, though he drew a clear line. “Don’t forget the director is the real general,” Kai Ko said. “The real captain of this whole collaboration. And he has the power of cutting.”
In “I Blew Out the Candles Before Making a Wish,” Kai Ko plays a Taiwanese man who relocates to Macau, falls into financial failure and crosses paths with a young girl. The role required him to deliver much of his dialogue in Cantonese, a language he had to learn for the part. “Mastering Cantonese was the hardest part for me to play this role,” he said. “Cantonese has nine tones. If you make the tone incorrectly, it turns into a completely different meaning of the word.”
He traveled to Macau to research the character, interviewing people who had gone there during the city’s casino boom, many of whom, he noted, came back empty-handed.
Looking ahead, Giddens confirmed he is developing his next feature in Taiwan, with a role written in for Kai Ko. Kai Ko is separately working on a second directorial project with a new screenwriter and said the film would likely arrive in 2027 if the script comes together. “We are going back and forth discussing a new script,” Kai Ko said. “I hope in the end it would be something interesting and better.”
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