Who is Ip Man you say? Well this is the Kung Fu instructor of Bruce Lee and he is getting the respect he is due with a pair of biopics celebrating his life and work. We get wind of this very exciting story from the legendary caves of yahoo:
Bruce Lee is the master to many martial arts fans, but less is known about his master, Ip Man, a pioneer in the kung fu style that influenced Lee. Hong Kong On Tuesday, action stars Donnie Yen and Sammo Hung from the U.S. TV series “Martial Law” prepared to start shooting one of two planned movies about Ip. They joined Ip’s sons in paying tribute to their father at his hometown in the southern city of Foshan, a four hours northwest of Hong Kong.
Born in Foshan in 1893, Ip started training around 1903 in wing chun. He arrived in Hong Kong in the 1940s to escape the Communist takeover of the mainland. In Hong Kong, he started out teaching kung fu to restaurant workers but broadened his reach to hundreds of students, including Lee, before passing away in 1972. Lee, who died in 1973 at age 32 from swelling of the brain, studied under Ip for five years, according to his official biography on the Bruce Lee Foundation Web site.
I think this is outstanding. To study the teacher of Bruce Lee will help us to understand his own fighting evolution that eventually led to the creation of his own Martial Art Jeet Kun Do. I would welcome further biopics exploring the life of Ip Man’s instructor, and if possible the instructors before him. To see the how fighting styles evolve as they pass from master to student over multiple generations would be an epic masterwork.
I am interested in a biopic but would also welcome an investigative documentary that interviews other students of Ip Man. Have they gone on to teach, and do they see similarities in their own Kung Fu to that of Bruce Lee? Five years is a substantial amount of time to learn from someone and the influence of Ip Man cannot be denied. This pair of films should delight Bruce Lee fans and martial arts fans alike.
I will be certain to keep you up to speed on the progress of these films, I look forward to them.
