Among all the other news items to be concerned about at the moment, you may have forgotten that groundbreaking rap crew the Wu-Tang Clan was set to return to the Ryman on May 3. While the unpredictability of the COVID-19 pandemic means there's no way to know for certain when it'll be safe to reschedule that show, Music City Wu-Tang fans will have a special and very unique Wu-related opportunity this week. Wu-Tang co-founder RZA and Dan Halstead (who is head programmer at The Hollywood Theatre in Portland, Ore.) will be giving commentary during a special stream of the cult-classic flick Shaolin Vs Wu-Tang on Friday, May 8, and the streaming event will be presented in part by the Belcourt.
The Wu-Tang Clan takes a variety of cues from low-budget martial-arts movies as a foundation for their group identity, and their name comes from this particular 1983 film, directed by (and starring) Gordon Liu. If you're a fan of Wu's genre-defining album Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), you can probably recite dialogue from the film — “En garde! I'll let you try my Wu-Tang style!” But opportunities to see Shaolin Vs Wu-Tang have been few and far between, as movies made as grindhouse fodder don't tend to be carefully archived. More than a decade ago, however, Halstead found a trove of them in astonishingly good condition in a long-shuttered theater in Vancouver, B.C., and they have since been donated to the American Genre Film Archive (AGFA). Halstead has access to what is believed to be the only 35 mm print of Shaolin Vs Wu-Tang in North America, which has been painstakingly digitized.
36 Chambers, the Wu-Tang-adjacent lifestyle brand launched by RZA and Mustafa Shaikh, has partnered up with Austin, Texas' famed Alamo Drafthouse and The Hollywood Theatre (through a venture called 36 Cinema) to organize a livestream of the film at 8:15 p.m. on May 8. RZA and Halstead will give live commentary during the screening, with Shaikh moderating. He'll be taking viewer questions for RZA and Halstead, too. Tickets are $10 each — check out the Belcourt site for full details; also see this FAQ from 36 Cinema. The event has been put together with the aim of helping out independent cinemas; though it's not a Belcourt event, a portion of proceeds will benefit the theater. You can make a donation directly to the Belcourt, as well.
