One of the most challenging, but, paradoxically, most enjoyable aspects of writing Ask for the Moon was conducting research. Out of respect for both my readers and the filmmakers about whom I was writing, I took great care in assembling reliable information on which to base the stories and ideas I was presenting.

As a long-time fan of martial arts movies I always knew where to start, having parsed relevant books in the State Library of Victoria as well as enjoying online resources such as web archives, blogs, and YouTube clips. As a producer and disseminator of cultural product, Shaw Brothers Organisation has had a huge impact on countries like Singapore, Hong Kong, and others in South East Asia. Therefore, when I settled on Shaw Brothers as a suitable subject for my book I knew that I would be able to access a range of materials to help me with my research. Scholars writing about culture, filmmaking technique, history, geopolitics, and business practice in Asian cinema have written many learned texts from which I could draw. Because Shaws was so effective at marketing, there is a huge range of archival promotional material extant and available as well. Academics, fans, entertainment writers, film critics, and ex Shaw’s employees have all created or curated material – blogs, books, articles, audio visual clips and interviews, collections of ephemera, memoirs – that can be easily accessed and explored.

A special boon was the work of Chinese scholars, film writers, or the cast and crew of the films themselves. For an English speaker like myself, the cultural nuances articulated in these particular materials were especially valuable.

Overall, I tried to access information from a healthy range of credible sources and, if possible, to use more than one source to verify facts.

In the book itself, the bibliography is six pages long and I have included 326 end notes (possibly I went overboard…) In this blog, I have included a short list of my very favourite research materials. Listed below are items that furnished me with the special ‘a-ha!’ moments or were essential in some other way.

Articles, papers, and blogs:

‘Moguls of the Chinese Cinema: The Story of the Shaw Brothers in Shanghai, Hong Kong and Singapore, 1924-2002’ by Stephanie Po-Yin Chung is an excellent paper that charts the history of the growth of Shaw Organisation from its earliest days, and discusses the familial business culture that influenced Runme and Run Run Shaw. It can be found in Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 4, No. 4 (Jul. 2007), pp. 665-682.

Another good paper to read for information about Shaw Brothers’ early history is ‘The Shaw Brothers’ Wuxia Pian: An Early Identity and Business-Cultural Connection for the Chinese in Malaya’ by Ngo Sheau Shi. This paper helped me understand the nostalgic allure of early Shaw Brothers’ swordplay films for homesick Chinese expats. It can be found in Kajian Malaysia, Vol. 29, Supp. 1, (2011), pp. 75-93.

Books:

I simply love the way that David Bordwell writes about Hong Kong cinema. He combines the glee of a true fan with the intellectual rigour and deep expertise of an academic. His Planet Hong Kong is a fantastic read not just for historical fact and analysis of film making technique for Shaws’ films, but other Hong Kong cinema as well.

Bordwell’s blog is well worth a look too. I found his blogs ‘Another Shaw production: Anamorphic Adventures in Hong Kong’ (October 2009) and ‘Lion, dancing: Lau Kar-Leung’ (2 July 2013) to contain excellent commentary on filmmaking technique.

In my book I wanted to focus on some of Shaws’ important individual filmmakers. Luckily, memoirs exist for a couple of them. Chang Cheh’s A Memoir (translated by Teri Chan and Agnes Lam. Hong Kong: Hong Kong Film Archive, 2004) seems to be out of print but I was able to track down a copy of it in a library. Ching-ling Kwok and Grace Ng’s Oral History Series 3 Director Chor Yuen was available from its publisher’s (Hong Kong Film Archive) website.

Poshek Fu has edited and contributed to China Forever: the Shaw Brothers and Diasporic Cinema (University of Illinois, 2008) which contains an interesting array of perspectives on Shaws. And, of course, anything by Stephen Teo on Hong Kong cinema will always furnish useful insights and information.

Web based materials:

The Hong Kong Movie Database is a great sprawling website created by fans of Kong Kong Cinema. As well as reviews, it contains detailed lists of cast and crew for 1000s of films, and the filmographies of many of them. This was an invaluable reference tool.

A lovely web archive is the Linn Haynes Memorial Collection, which has digitised copies of Shaws’ own in-house magazines, printed in the 1970s and 1980s and distributed to fans worldwide. Just being able to ‘flick’ through the scanned pages of these publications gave me a great sense of how Shaws wanted to brand itself. Kudos to Shaolin Chamber 36 for hosting this important collection.

Oral histories provide important accounts of lived experience. Albert Odell, who worked for Shaws in the late 50s has a (candid) oral history stored on the National Archives of Singapore website.

Another interesting oral history – that of beloved kung fu movie star Gordon Liu – is contained on the Hong Kong Memory website. An English language translation of the transcription is available.