Hi Russ,
I don't know the exact name of the episode on Hong, I think the name of the series was 'Masters of the Martial Arts' or something like that.
I'm sure someone posting here knows the name of the series?

I think that the title was "Way of the Warrior", and Howard Reid was mostly responsible for producing it.

I've seen copies that friends recorded when the series was first screened, but I've had no joy with the BBC. However, they have just opened an office only 5 minutes walk from work, so I'll pop in next week and make some fresh enquiries.

Cheers

Rich

I remember a series called Way Of The Warrior, it was narrated by Dennis Waterman (Of the Sweeney and Minder series)

It covered martial arts from many countries and was the first time Pa-Kua (amongst others) was seen on British TV.

Hope this helps you find out more, I have had no luck with the BBC either! You would think they are trying to hide the series....

did anyone ever find this?

No, but I've seen it.
It's sehr cool.

I just brought the accompanying book (a lucky find in a second hand book shop), also called 'Way of the warriror' - it has about 5 pages on Hong and lots of good photos and info about him.

A lot of the information in the book is inaccurate, but there's lots of stuff about Hong that's good, and also lots of pictures of him - there's pictures of him doing each of the 5 elements and some of his students (I think) and himself doing some of the animals.

The captions are bit off though - they call Beng the water element(!) for instance, and the picture of the bloke doing what they call 'chicken' looks a hell of a lot like he's doing Dragon to me - he's on his way down to the low Pi - I could be wrong there though. The picture of Tzuann is the primary technique from the Tzuann Chaun form (often used to 'open the gate'), not the bit with the actual Tzuann jin in it (the secondary technique - often used once you have 'opened the gate').

An interesting book full of annecdotes and good pictures - nothing of real substance though.

I got hold of a copy of this series a few months back (thanks to a very kind poster on another forum - if you're reading this, a million thanks again!)the episode with Hung I Hsiang is very interesting, he didn't show much but you get a good insight into what his public classes where like at the time, see him overseeing a kids class where they are learning some shaolin stuff (longfist maybe), one of his students demo's some xing yi - it was the Cock form and the swallow I think - and also a two man drill, the student demoing the bagua circle walking is Luo Dexiu! although you wouldn't recognise him immediately, and lastly you get to see Hung do his taichi form (chen pan ling?) and show some applications and a little push hands. The voiceover is pretty uninformative and full of the usual misconceptions and oversimplifications etc... but on the whole a brilliant TV programme the like of which we rarely see nowadays. The other episodes where great too - especially the one on Indian MA. I cannot understand why the BBC dont make this available on DVD - or at least repeat it.

There are some clips of Hongyixiang online here (bottom left clip):

http://www.emptyflower.com/video.html

Hi Guys

I was fortunate to have recorded all 8 episodes of the BBC "Way of the Warrior" series when it was broadcast in the early 80's.

Its a great shame that it was never released on VHS or DVD. Despite several attempts by myself and numerous others to persuade them do so. I think someone even set up a petition.

Anyhow I have just recently finished transferring the recordings from Betamax tape to DVD. As the tapes are now over 20 years old I was very keen to preserve these programmes! I used a professional digital enhancer/encoder which allowed colour correction etc. This has improved the clarity and colour balance significantly so the transfers look even better than the originals!

The encoder also provided digital conversion from PAL to NTSC.

If any of you haven't seen the series and would like a copy just send me an email.

Regards

Rob

Bob;
Have you licenced with the BBC to do this kind of duplication and reproduction?

If you haven't, you may well be breaking international copyright law by doing so and I would hate to see you hounded by some bureaucratic types just because you are trying to do your fellow martial artists a good turn. As you know, there is no such thing as privacy anymore when you post on the internet. Big Brother IS watching.

I'm trying to be helpful here and not an alarmist "spoil-sport" as I have some professional experience with writing, copyright law and policing.

P.S. I would love to see that series as I bought the book that followed the series back in the 80s.

Hi Michael

Thanks for your reply.

As I understand it, it is illegal to make a profit from commerical re-selling of a previously broadcast program. However in the case of home taping (as far as the UK is concerned) it is OK to make copies of a show for friends etc and recover costs. Maybe the law is different in the USA.

There are no indictations that the BBC ever intend to make this series available on DVD or VHS or re-broadcast it. Which is a great shame as so many people are interested in it. Maybe the level of interest is just too small for them? I suspect the original films/tapes may have been lost/damaged/destroyed and they dont want to admit it!

Unfortunately a few decades ago it was commonplace for many TV companies to arbitrarily destroy a lot of recorded material simply because they had run out of room to store it. So it may well be that I am one of a few who have the complete series intact.

Rob

RObK,

If you would like to share put a vcd or a dvd in your drive and use a program called fraps to capture parts of the clip or the whople clip and save it onto a file:
http://www.fraps.com/

First you minimize fraps on your desktop and have a video playing on windows media player or other media players and if you see a number on your upper left hand screen than it;s working. Than press f9 where you want to start saving your video file and when it's over press f9 again. Afterwards you can put it on the net by going to:
http://rapidshare.de/en/main.html

(it's good to pay the one time 7 buck fee on that site for easier use but you don't have to).