HERE is an antidote to the Hollywood blockbusters we’re implored to spend our summer holidays watching.

Forget Spider-Man and The Odyssey – head to the Garden Cinema in Covent Garden over the next six weeks for the rare opportunity to watch some of the most inventive films ever made on the big screen.

The cinema is hosting an expansive Hong Kong film season, and it is a reminder of a golden age that had a global impact.

The draw of Hong Kong movies was partly based on the fact they were so thrilling and different to the Hollywood action flicks with a neo-con message that dominated the 1980s and early 1990s.

Watching legendary actor Chow Yun-fat in A Better Tomorrow (1986) was an eye-opener as to what an action film could be about. It built on the work done by the great Jackie Chan, who began his career as a stunt man in kung fu movies.

In this era of Hollywood’s dodgy special effects, there is something very real about the action playing out – as if Buster Keaton had been transported into the world of Hong Kong gangsters.

Their work made the Hong Kong movie industry slowly creep into western film consciousness. Its impact was noted in Quentin Tarantino’s True Romance, where Christian Slater’s hero meets his beau while watching a kung fu triple bill in his local flea pit. It is telling that the 90s trendiest director borrowed massively from the Hong Kong oeuvre.

The Garden Cinema’s season covers a period from the late-1970s through to the 1990s and they have secured an appearance from one of the movement’s biggest directors, Stanley Kwan.

His work ranges across themes of memory and identity: the cinema showing three of his best – Centre Stage (1991), Red Rose, White Rose (1994) and Full Moon In New York (1989), and he will there for Q&As and is hosting a free masterclass examining his work.

And it wouldn’t be a Hong Kong season without some John Woo: his 1991 hit Once A Thief features, while Tsui Hark’s A Chinese Ghost Story is perhaps the finest example of the industry’s interest in bringing together myths, supernatural happenings and extraordinary martial arts.

The season runs through to the end of August, and all screenings feature English subtitles – in the past, some Hong Kong films were dubbed, adding to an other-worldly comic effect.

• For tickets and more details, search: www.thegardencinema.co.uk/season/hong-kong-golden-age-1985-1997/