Green Snake is a 1993 Hong Kong

Cinema of Hong Kong

The cinema of Hong Kong is one of the three major threads in the history of Chinese language cinema, alongside the cinema of China, and the cinema of Taiwan...

 fantasy film

Film

A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...

 made by Tsui Hark

Tsui Hark

Tsui Hark , born Tsui Man-kong, is a Hong Kong New Wave film director and producer. He is viewed as a major figure in the Golden Age of Hong Kong cinema .-Early life:...

. It is the adaptation of a novel

Novel

A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

 of the same title by Lilian Lee

Lilian Lee

Lilian Lee, also spelled Lillian Lee , is a Chinese-language novelist best known as the author of Farewell My Concubine, adapted as a movie by Chen Kaige. She is the author of about ninety books.Lee was born Lee Bak in Taishan, Guangzhou...

.

The novel itself is a variation of a Chinese folk tale Madame White Snake

Madame White Snake

The Legend of the White Snake, also known as Madame White Snake, is a Chinese legend, which existed as oral traditions before any written compilation...

, where Lillian Lee tells the story from the perspective of Xiaoqing, the Green Snake, who normally plays a supporting role behind the main character Bai Suzhen, the White Snake

White snake

White Snake may refer to:* White Snake, first solo album by David Coverdale, released in 1977* Whitesnake, a rock band* The White Snake, a German fairy tale included in Grimm's Fairy Tales...

. As the title suggests, the movie also features Xiaoqing as the main character.
Two snake spirits have been training for many centuries to take human

Human

Humans are the only living species in the Homo genus...

 form and experience the love, freedom and wisdom that is supposedly only available to humans.