'The End Of An Era': KungFuCinema.com Shuts Down

As many of you all know, I don't normally eulogize on my blog here as I usually prefer to focus on the overall excitement and fandom of the action genre. In that respect, I have quite a few people out there to thank for inspiring me to come as far as I have in leading Film Combat Syndicate, especially since my heyday as a reader of Mark Pollard's Kung Fu Cinema.

I used to visit here plenty of times several years ago when I first began patronizing defunct sites like HKFlix.com, HKDVDStore.com, edaymovie.com and hkdvdstore.com, as well as the still very much active YesAsia.com. As with many netizens and much like KFCCinema and Kaiju Shakedown at Variety, Kung Fu Cinema was a staple for me on overall history as well as news on current films, and all of which among many inspired me to start my own platform through a free trial at a site called freehostia.net at the time; the name of my blog was called Source Of The Fist (yeah, corny. I know. Sometimes I still wonder if Film Combat Syndicate makes any sense, haha.)

This was all up until our computer died and long before the age of the smartphone took place before the inception of this blog through Facebook just five months earlier in September 2012. To date, I still read plenty of fan sites and even have a few blogrolled on here which I enjoy, and being a part of the atmosphete here as an unpaid writer has its finer moments. And sharing that lineage of fandom with Kung Fu Cinema has been an honor up ro Saturday when seven-year contributor, Albert Valentin received the devastating news of the now (albeit tentatively) defunct KungFuCinema.com personally from the site's founder, Mark Pollard, before announcing on his own profile page. Here is a portion of it:

Well, the end of a era has arrived. I have been given the official word that KungFuCinema.com has closed its internet portal for reasons beyond control. I will forever be grateful to Mark Pollard, whom I call "The Grandmaster" because this was his baby, for giving me the opportunity seven years ago to write for this site. He served as a mentor of sorts when I first started and I learned a lot through him. In addition, some of the users I've had the pleasure to meet through the message boards had been great. I felt as if I had another family at times, so to this day, I still consider them my KF brothers and sisters...

I didn't pester for any specifics in that regard - we all have personal lives and reasons for stepping back and away from what we love to focus on other endeavors, or reasons we don't all particularly need to know within entirety. As it stands, some things happen beyond our control.

At any rate however, and for all intents and purposes, Kung Fu Cinema is forever entrenched in the netizenry as one of the best things that ever happened to the global martial arts action fanbase. Hopefully this isn't the last we see of Kung Fu Cinema, and with any luck its contributors and founder will be back, up and running with a fresh new page for the fans. Although, if this truly is the end, by all means Kung Fu Cinema...take a bow.

Valentin has since continued his critical and enthusiastic cinema endeavors at his new platform over at World Film Geek. Feel free to take a gander, and keep supporting sites like ours.

Photo: MAE