Ann Hui

On 23 May 1947, Ann Hui was born in Anshan, Liaoning province, Manchuria to a Chinese father and a Japanese mother. In 1952, she moved to Macau, then Hong Kong at the age of five and attended St. Paul's Convent School. Hui then received a Masters in English and comparative literature at the University of Hong Kong until 1972 and later, studied at the London Film School for two years. Before receiving her degree, Hui studied and did her thesis on the works of Alain Robbe-Grillet, a French writer and filmmaker.

When Hui returned to Hong Kong after her stay in London, she became the assistant to the prominent Chinese film director, King Hu. Her breakthrough directorial work began with several drama series and short documentaries on 16mm for the Television Broadcasts Limited (TVB) television station. During 1977, Hui produced and directed half a dozen films for the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC), a Hong Kong organization created to clean up government misconduct. Two of these films were so controversial that they had to be banned from airing. A year later, Hui directed three episodes of Below the Lion Rock, a documentary series depicting the lives of people from Hong Kong, under the public broadcasting station, Radio Television Hong Kong (RTHK). The most recognized episode of Hui's is Boy from Vietnam (1978), which is the start of her "Vietnam trilogy."[5]

After a few years in the television industry, Hui finally directed her first feature-length film, The Secret (1979), which earned Golden Horse Award for Best Feature Film. In the 1980s, Hui's career was growing on the international cinema circuit. The most popular films for that time were Eastern variations of Hollywood oriented gangster and action films. But Hui did not follow the trend and preferred to create more personal films. Many of her best films involved themes pertaining to cultural displacement. In particular, her central characters are often individuals who are forced to relocate to another country and shown to be struggling and learning to survive. Hui tends to explore the characters' reactions to different environments and their responses to their return home. During this "New Wave" period, most of her films are sharp and tough, with satirical and political metaphors, reflecting her concern for "people"; her concern for women; voicing for orphans who have been devastated by war; and also voicing for Vietnamese refugees.[6] Her best known works, which fall under this category, are The Story of Woo Viet (1981) and Boat People (1982) – the remaining two parts of her "Vietnam trilogy." Boat People won the Hong Kong Film Awards for Best Film and Best director. Although Hui has directed some generic films, another common theme she works with is family conflict, such as in the film My American Grandson (1990).

Hui's concern for "people" and "female" become the most common them in her films. She always records the stories from the perspectives of female objectivities.[6] One of her most personal work is Song of the Exile (1990), a semi-autobiographical film.The film discusses the problem of "family connection" and “identity".[6] It depicts the story of a young woman, Cheung Hueyin returning to Hong Kong for her sisters wedding after studying film in London for a couple of years. Hueyin and her mother, who is Japanese, do not seem to have a steady relationship. But as the film follows Hueyin's journey to her mother's hometown in Japan, Hueyin and her mother are forced to reexamine each other's relationship, as both have experienced the issue of being uprooted from one's own country. This film won both the Hong Kong Film Awards and Golden Horse Award for Best Director, and Hui became a director who won the most of these two awards. She served as the president of the Hong Kong Film Director's Guild in 2004.[7]

In the 1990s, Hui's work began to target more commercialized films. Her directing career has slowed down a bit, as she focused more on behind-the-scenes work for other filmmakers. However, the theme of displacement is still recurrent in most of her works. During the mid-1990s, Hui tried to start up a film project about the Tiananmen Square massacre and the reactions of Hong Kong citizens. But the project was never made due to the lack of investments and funding. The term Tiananmen Square massacre is no longer in use by the Chinese government, as it portrays a harsher image of the incident. It is now more recognized as the Tiananmen Square protests or the June Fourth Incident. Throughout her career, Hui has often taken chances to develop more intense and ambitious films, while making a name for herself.[8]

Hui has said in an interview about her desire to work on more socially conscious projects. She was aware of the difficulties in finding such projects that would both "attract investors as well as appeal to the public." Her goal was to "present something that is watchable and at the same time attractive" and allow the public to analyze the social issues involved. Although Hui is best known for making controversial films, the interview, in particular, was describing the horrors of increased crime and unemployment rates in Tin Shui Wai, Hong Kong. The two films of Hui's that focus on these issues are The Way We Are (2008) and Night and Fog (2009), while maintaining a motif of displacement.[9]

Ann Hui, as a female director, starts with the female perspective, depicting the hearts of women. Most of her films show daily life of women in Hong Kong and create vivid female images through delicate artistic expression. In her movies, women are independent individuals with their own personality. Her films are always full of a sense of drama, but they do not make the audience feel hopeless. They all have an atmosphere of grief, but without pessimism. In her films, there is no terrible conflict, but she uses a plain method to represent the female world. In her movies, women always feel powerlessness, but all of them do not surrender to fate and work hard and strive. Hui's feminist film works are rich with women's emotions and female consciousness, making the audiences feel the struggle and warmth of women's lives.[15]

As one of a leading figure of Hong Kong's New Wave, Hui has been continuously challenging herself and trying to broaden her film career while bringing audiences surprises. This is highlighted in her tendency for telling women's stories over the years, forming her unique artistic style. As a female filmmaker, Hui has created various female images by using the film language, which is unique in the Hong Kong film industry.[16]

Hui's films reflect diverse female images. Firstly, she creates submissive women, for example, with Sum Ching in The Story of Woo Viet (1982), Cam Nuong in Boat People (1982), Mang Tit Lan in Zodiac Killers (1991), and Ling in Night and Fog (2009). Facing the injustice of life, these women will only passively accept the arrangement of fate, and silently endure the hardship of life. Director Hui gives more attention and sympathy to such women, and such films permeate her deep thinking on female destiny. However, Hui also creates female characters with strong sense of rebellion, such as Bai Liu-Su in Love in a Fallen City (1984), May Sun in Summer Snow (1995), Gu Manzhen in Eighteen Springs (1997), and Xiao Hong in The Golden Era (2014), etc. In these films, women are no longer the submissive and coward appendages of traditional patriarchy. Instead, they become women who are courageous to fight for their rights.[16]

• Erens, Brett. "Crossing Borders: Time Memory, and the Construction of Identity in "Song of the Exile"." Cinema Journal. 39.4 (2000): 43-59.
• Edwards, Russell. "Night and FogTin Shui Wai dik ye yu mo (Hong Kong) ." Variety. 30 Mar 2009: n. page. Web. 7 May. 2012.
• Hui, Ann, and Lawrence Chua. "Ann Hui." Bomb. 36. (1991): 28-30.
• Lau, Jenny Kwok Wah. "Besides Fists and Blood: Hong Kong Comedy and Its Master of the Eighties." Cinema Journal. 37.2 (1998): 18-34.
• Saltz, Rachel. "In Old Age the Servant Becomes the Served." New York Times. 12 Apr 2012: n. page. Web. 7 May. 2012

• List of graduates of University of Hong Kong
• List of female film and television directors
• List of LGBT-related films directed by women

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Ann Hui.

• Ann Hui on IMDb
• HK cinemagic entry
• Ann Hui at Rotten Tomatoes