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“The Jade Tiger” will be screened Saturday as part of the UCLA Film & Television

Beyond a sweating Bruce Lee dubbed with usually robotic English pronunciation, the history of Chinese martial arts cinema has remained relatively obscure.

However, thanks to decades of collecting and newly remastered prints, the UCLA Film and Television Archive is currently presenting “Heroic Grace: The Chinese Martial Arts Film, Part II,” a continuation of the 2003 series intended to change preconceptions of Chinese martial arts cinema.

The series runs through Dec. 11 at the James Bridges Theater.

“People have this image that Chinese martial arts films are just one fight after another, with no moral lesson or cinematic value. We’re in a position to correct that,” said David Chute, a film critic for LA Weekly who has written extensively on the subject.

This part of the series features films from the 1970s and early 1980s, a time when Chinese martial arts films first became popular in the United States.

This period also nurtured such talents as directors Chu Yuan and Lau Kar-leung and the well-known actor-directors Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan and Jet Li, among others.

Martial arts films can be traced to the very beginning of Chinese cinema and the tradition of “wuxia,” which literally means “martial arts chivalry” or “martial arts heroes.” The wuxia genre first took form on stage, but then became a natural subject matter for Chinese film.

“In a time when China was in a space of disarray, there was a need for a fiction that would create a parallel utopian China,” said Bérénice Reynaud, a film professor at the California Institute of the Arts.

“In the Republican era, starting in 1911, China became prey to war lords. The wuxia was an alternative world where (anyone) could actually be better than a king, because they could be superior in the martial arts.”

According to Chute, wuxia fiction in Chinese cinema is comparable to the American Western.

“When American filmmakers were looking for things to make films about, Westerns were natural. For China, the biggest works of fiction were wuxia,” he said. “(Chinese filmmakers) didn’t really pay attention to the world outside of Asia until the 1960s.”

As Chinese world consciousness increased, however, the world also began to take note of Chinese film.

First brought back by servicemen stationed in Asia, Chinese films were immediately attractive to audiences worldwide. Bruce Lee’s popularity helped Americans to become enamored with the Kung Fu film, a subgenre of wuxia, culminating in the short-lived “Kung Fu Craze” of the 1970s.

“For a few months in 1973, three of the top five films in the American box-office were Kung Fu films,” Chute said.

Consequently, the market was bombarded with imperfect imitations, poorly made and badly projected. In only a few years, Chinese cinema lost any semblance of artistic respect – something some critics argued the films lacked in the first place.

“Because these movies were foreign, they were considered little, third-world movies, even though many times they made more money than American films,” Reynaud said. “And American distributors who had these films thought they were designed for a very lowbrow audience who didn’t read subtitles, so they dubbed them.”

“Heroic Grace” offers prints of films rarely screened in their original form, and with them an opportunity to revamp appreciation for the Kung Fu and wuxia genres.

According to Chute, the recent success of films such as “House of Flying Daggers” and “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” have proven that American audiences have found beauty and artistry in Chinese martial arts cinema.

“What we have right now is a chance to resuscitate the image of the genre ... to show people that there were always pictures like this,” Chute said.

Though they have always existed, these films are only now readily available.

Previously, cropped and dubbed versions on late-night television or copies purchased in foreign countries were the only sources. Today, however, companies such as Shaw Bros. have gathered and refurbished these films, preparing them for wide release on DVD.

“Because these films were (previously) unavailable, opening these vaults of Chinese film history has probably been one of the most significant events in film of the last 10 years,” Reynaud said.

Saturday’s screening, the next in the series, features two films that have both recently yielded comic and satiric tribute: Zhang Che and Bao Xueli’s 1972 classic, “The Boxer From Shantung” (respectfully mocked in the recent “Kung Fu Hustle”), and Lau Kar-leung’s 1982 “Legendary Weapons of China” (referenced in “Kill Bill 2”).

After the conclusion of “Heroic Grace II” in Los Angeles, a package of titles will travel on an international tour organized by the Archive in hopes of reopening eyes worldwide to the artistry of Chinese martial arts films.

“What would you think if French audiences only had access to ‘Citizen Kane’ in a badly cropped, badly dubbed version?” asked Reynaud. “Wouldn’t you think they were missing an important part of American cinematic history?”