[Commlist] CfP Fight Scene Choreography in Film and TV Series

*CfP “Give me your best shot, pal. I can take it.”:*
*
*Fight Scene Choreography in Film and TV Series*
*
Montpellier, October 4, 2024
One-day symposium organized by Amandine D’Azevedo and David Roche
Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3, Institut Universitaire de France

This one-day symposium will focus on fight choreographies in films and 
television series. The focus will be on fight scenes (and not military 
or police combat scenes) that are based on martial arts, combat sports 
and self-defense, with or without weapons, in a wide variety of film and 
television genres such as peplums, action, sf, horror, superhero, 
viking, boxing, wrestling and martial arts movies. Talks will analyze 
fight scenes as autonomous units and as discrete elements within a given 
work, and will consider fight choreography as a practice that raises 
aesthetic, methodological, theoretical, cultural and political questions.

While talks can focus on works produced in any region of the world and 
at any period in time, particular attention will be paid to Hong Kong 
cinema due to its status as the center of a network of influences in the 
history of both martial arts and film forms. Indeed, Hong Kong studios 
initiated the circulation of numerous motifs by staging Chinese martials 
in their pure and impure/syncretic forms (Liu Chia-liang’s attachement 
to classical styles and his disapproval of Bruce Lee, the inventor of 
Jeet Kun Do, is well documented). The transnational circulation of films 
but also of actors, choreographers and directors (including Michelle 
Yeoh, Jackie Chan, Yuen Woo-ping and John Woo) testify to the fact that 
Hong Kong cinema has been a major influence on Hollywood, Indian as well 
as African cinemas (Alphonse Béni’s 1985 Cameroon Connection features a 
character named Bruce Le), in films and series borrowing from Hong Kong 
techniques and styles of staging and shooting action scenes. The 
increasing popularity of Mixed Martial Arts competitions in the 1990s 
has also led cinema and television to engage with contemporary combat 
sports in films like Ong-Bak (Prachya Pinkaew, 2003) and Warrior (Gavin 
O'Connor, 2011). The conflicts between martial arts schools, regions 
(North and South Shaolin) and national styles (karate versus kung-fu) 
provide a wide array of narrative premises with geopolitical 
implications, whether in an Asian context (Police Story 3, Stanley Tong 
1992; Shaolin Karaté, Norifumi Suzuki 1975; Fist of Fury, Lo Wei 1973) 
or in a globalized context (the John Wick franchise). By circulating 
among a wide variety of cultural contexts, fight scenes have become 
eminently hybrid.

“Fight choreography,” John Kreng states in his indispensable 2008 book, 
“should not be seen as simply using a martial art or a system or style 
of self-defense that has been altered for use in the film. Rather, it 
should be looked at as a theatrical combative art form in and of itself 
because it is creating an illusion of a physical confrontation that 
combines the use of theatrics with martial arts to assist and enhance in 
telling the story of the film” (xxii). An effective fight choreography 
aims not at efficacy in combat but at dramatic efficacy and is an 
essential component of the narrative (Kreng notes that Lethal Weapon’s 
[Richard Donner, 1987] triangular choke lacks visual impact or praises 
the power John Wayne packed into his punches). Fight choreography 
evinces the tension between artifice and realism at the heart of any 
spectacular representation and thus participates in the aesthetic debate 
between ideals of cinematic realism or illusion. The presence of martial 
or combat professionals begs the question as to whether or not it is 
necessary to call on actual practioners to perform in these scenes. In 
effect, relying on these artists makes it possible for the 
cinematography to foreground the profilmic (through the use of long 
shots) instead of resorting to fast editing techniques or digital 
effects; in the 21st century, this ethos transpires through the 
opposition between special effects (the use of cables in Tarantino’s 
2003-4 Kill Bill) and digital effects which can compensate for the lack 
of martial talent but also allow for the invention of new moves and 
techniques (Matrix, Lana and Lilly Wachowski, 1999). Part of the 
spectatorial pleasure provided by certain fight scenes may very well 
stem from the impression or knowledge that the moves executed by the 
likes of Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan were effected “for real.” Fight 
choreographies thus rely on a series of extrinsic norms, involving the 
performativity and fluidity of bodies and including conventions such as 
the hyperbolic sonic impact of the cinematic punch or kick. These norms 
can, no doubt, evolve throughout the film based on the rules that govern 
the diegetic world, so that audiences will come to accept that the 
series of actions are becoming increasingly intense and incredible.

Can genres like the martial arts, boxing and wrestling movies be added 
to Linda Williams’s list of body genres (melodrama, horror and 
pornography), their common denominator being the motifs of blood and 
sweat? Indeed, at the most primal level, a fight scene is a state of 
affairs in which bodies face off, producing meaning and affecting our 
senses. In visual terms, the moving bodies appear as figures deployed in 
cinematic space. Fighters can exploit the topography and resources of a 
given space, evincing an economic relationship to their immediate 
environment (Jackie Chan in Police Story’s movies); spatial coordinates 
can be reconfigured by these violent actions but can also offer 
resistance to the fighters’ actions. Fight scenes aim to produce a 
perlocutionary effect on audiences, sometimes by resorting to aesthetics 
favoring hapticity or synesthesia, in which the movements’ and noises’ 
volume, intensity and rhythm make us feel the impact and power of a 
punch or a kick; blind characters like Zatoïchi and Daredevil are apt 
material for such formal experimentations. Politically speaking, the 
fighters’ bodies are inscribed in a variety of cultural contexts; for 
instance, the mastery of martial arts is deemed superior to height or 
muscle (allowing Bruce Lee to best Karim Abul Jabar or the Shaw 
Brothers’ Pai Mei and female characters to best younger male fighters). 
Tolerance to violence and blood, and the institutional regulation of 
their representation, also vary from one culture to another, as well as 
depending on gender, with fighting women often remaining unsullied by 
combat, and thus has implications on the aesthetics of fight scenes.

Analyzing fight scenes in films and series may very well require 
additional information (for instance, familiarity with the names of 
fighting techniques or the cultural traditions associated with a martial 
practice) and methodologies borrowed from other academic disciplines 
(sports and dance studies, for instance). The aesthetic and cultural 
hybridity of fight scenes is fertile terrain for intermedial approaches 
focusing on the dialogue between various arts and media. The logic of 
the action sequence has obvious parallels with that of the musical 
number because both operate as spectacular interruptions in a narrative; 
the fight scene’s potential to disrupt or link, and the centrality of 
music and noises to endow the dance/martial gestures with rhythm, 
require careful consideration. Attention can also be paid to 
counter-examples in which the fight scene does not constitute a break 
but is relies on everyday gestures. The importance of tempo and rhythm 
in these scenes invites us to examine the fight scene’s duration, the 
way it works to ellipticize or, on the contrary, expand the action, 
climaxing in a final and potentially fatal hit. Fight scenes may 
orchestrate gradations in technique and violence both within the 
sequence and as a series of sequences within the film. Generally 
speaking, musicals and fight movies seem to require attention to the key 
significance of the number’s intermeshing relationship with the 
narrative structure and how the scene can or cannot be isolated from the 
rest of the movie. The line between fight scenes and musical numbers is 
a thin one, many movies deliberately toying with the similarities 
between a martial and a dance move (Sparrow, Johnnie To, 2008), a hit 
and a dance figure, a duel and a duo (Bahubali, S.S. Rajamouli, 2015), a 
ballet and a battle, or a confrontation between two rival gangs and a 
group dance (the cinema of Kanagaraj, for instance, replaces dancing 
with fights, albeit retaining the usual popular Indian film music). 
Finally, speakers might like to examine the probable influence of video 
games on 21st-century fight scenes in film and series (in films derived 
from video games like the Resident Evil franchise [2002-2016] and Tomb 
Raider [2001-2018], series like Daredevil [Netflix, 2015-2018] or John 
Wick 4, Chad Stahelski, 2023).



Proposals including a 300-word abstract and a short bio must be sent to 
Amandine D’Azevedo ((amandine.d-azevedo /at/ univ-montp3.fr) 
<mailto:(amandine.d-azevedo /at/ univ-montp3.fr)>) and David Roche 
((david.roche /at/ univ-montp3.fr) <mailto:(david.roche /at/ univ-montp3.fr)>) by *May 
17, 2024*.



Scientific committee: Julien Achemchame (Université Paul-Valéry 
Montpellier 3), Claire Cornillon (Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3), 
Lisa Coulthard (University of British Columbia), Alix de Morant 
(Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3), Térésa Faucon (Université 
Sorbonne Nouvelle), Antoine Gaudin (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle), 
Lalitha Gopalan (University of Texas at Austin), Marianne Kac-Vergne 
(Université de Picardie Jules Verne), Hervé Mayer (Université 
Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3), Lindsay Steenberg (Oxford Brookes University)



Selected Bibliography

Bordwell, David. “Aesthetics in Action : Kungfu, Gunplay, and Cinematic 
Expressivity.” In At Full Speed: Hong Kong Cinema in a Borderless World, 
edited by Esther C. M. Yau. University of Minnesota Press, 2004, pp. 73-93.

Branigan, Erin. Dancefilm Choreography and the Moving Image. Oxford 
University Pess, 2011.

Brenez, Nicole. “John Woo par lui-même : la prise et le plan.” In De la 
figure en général et du corps en particulier. De Boeck Supérieur, 1998, 
pp. 283-84.

Coulthard, Lisa. “Fist to Face: Corporeal Listening and the Cinematic 
Punch.” In The Oxford Handbook of Cinematic Listening, edited by Carlo 
Cenciarelli. Oxford University Press, 2021. Pp. 357-365.

Coulthard, Lisa and Lindsay Steenberg. “Red Circle of Revenge : Anatomy 
of the Fight Sequence in John Wick.” In the World of John Wick: One 
Year’s Work at the Continental Hotel, edited by Caitlin G. Watt and 
Stephen Watt, Indiana University Press, 2022, pp. 41-62.

Faucon, Térésa and Caroline San Martin (eds.). Chorégraphier le film : 
gestes, caméra, montage. Mimesis, 2019.

Gaudin, Antoine. L’Espace cinématographique. Armand Colin, 2015.

Gauville, Hervé. Le cinéma par la danse. Capricci Editions, 2020.

Gopalan, Lalitha. Cinema of Interruptions: Action Genres in Contemporary 
Indian Cinema. Bloosmbury, 2019.

Inouye, Kevin. The Screen Combat Handbook: A Practical Guide for 
Filmmakers. Routledge, 2020.

Iyer, Usha. Dancing Women: Choreographing Corporeal Histories of Hindi 
Cinema. Oxford University Press, 2020.

Kreng, John. Fight Choreography: The Art of Non-Verbal Dialogue. , 2005.

LeTraunik, Brian. A History of Contemporary Stage Combat. Routledge, 2020.

McAsh, F. Braun. Fight Choreography: A Practical Guide for Stage, Film 
and Television. The Crowood Press, 2010.

Neroni, Hilary. The Violent Woman: Femininity, Narrative, and Violence 
in Contemporary American Cinema. Albany: State University of New York 
Press, 2005.

Pettigrew, Ian. “Entering the Cinema of Attractions’ Matrix : Yuen 
Wo-Ping’s Merging of Hollywood Spectacle with Kungfu Choreography.” 
Asian Cinema, vol. 29, n°1, 2018, pp. 81-97.

Purse, Lisa. Contemporary Action Cinema. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University 
Press, 2011.

Roche, David. “Choreographing Genre in Kill Bill Vol. 1 & 2 
(2003-2004).” Miranda, vol. 10, 2014.

Steenberg, Lindsay. Are You Not Entertained? Mapping the Gladiator 
Across Visual Media. Bloomsbury, 2020.

Tomasovic, Dick. Kino-Tanz : l’art chorégraphique du cinéma. PUF, 2009.

Williams, Linda. “Film Bodies: Gender, Genre, and Excess.” Film 
Quarterly, vol. 44, no. 4, 1991, pp. 2-13.

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