Ann Hui
Ann Hui On-wah is a Hong Kong filmmaker and actress. One of the most critically acclaimed filmmakers of the Hong Kong New Wave, she is known for her films about social issues in Hong Kong which include literary adaptations, martial arts, semi-autobiographical works, women's issues, social phenomena, political changes, and thrillers. She served as the president of the Hong Kong Film Directors' Guild from 2004 to 2006.
Hui has won numerous awards. She won Best Director at the Golden Horse Awards three times ; Best Film at the Asia Pacific Film Festival; and Best Director at the Hong Kong Film Awards six times.
Only two films have won a Grand Slam at the Hong Kong Film Awards; they are Summer Snow and A Simple Life, both directed by Ann Hui. She was honored for her lifetime accomplishments at the 2012 Asian Film Awards. In 2017, the US based Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences invited Hui to become a member.
Early life
Hui was born on 23 May 1947 in Anshan, a Chinese iron-mining city in Liaoning Province. Hui's mother was Japanese and her father was Chinese. In 1952, Hui moved to Macau, then to Hong Kong at the age of five. Hui attended St. Paul's Convent School. She grew up in an old-fashioned Chinese family. Since her grandfather and father both loved classical literature, Hui learned to recite many ancient Chinese poems. When she was in college, Hui worked in the student theater troupe performing as an extra, doing busywork and designing posters. When she had troubles she couldn't resolve, she would go to the cinema to watch a movie.Education
In 1972, Hui earned a master's in English and comparative literature from the University of Hong Kong. Hui studied at the London Film School for two years. Hui wrote her thesis on the works of Alain Robbe-Grillet, a French writer and filmmaker.Career
When Hui returned to Hong Kong after her stay in London, she became an assistant to prominent Chinese film director King Hu. She then began working for Television Broadcasts Limited as a scriptwriter-director and produced documentaries such as Wonderful, four episodes of CID, two of Social Worker, and one of the Dragon, Tiger, Panther series. In March 1977 she directed six dramas for the Independent Commission Against Corruption, a Hong Kong organization created to clean up government misconduct. Two of these films were so controversial that they were banned. A year later, Hui directed three episodes of Below the Lion Rock, a documentary series about people from Hong Kong, produced by public broadcasting station, Radio Television Hong Kong. The most recognized episode of Hui's is Boy from Vietnam, which is the start of her Vietnam Trilogy.In 1979, Hui finally directed her first feature-length film, The Secret, which presents images from the gloomy and dreary old Western District, with its worn-out mansions, shadowy alleys, fallen leaves and religious rituals, such as the ceremonial rite of releasing the soul from purgatory by burning paper money and cutting off the head of a chicken. The Secret earned Hui a Golden Horse Award for Best Feature Film.
In the 1980s, Hui's career was growing internationally. The most popular films of that time were Eastern variations of Hollywood gangster and action films. But Hui did not follow the trend, and instead created more personal films. Many of her best films dealt with cultural displacement. In particular, her central characters are often forced to relocate to another country where they struggle to learn and survive. Hui explores the characters' reactions to new 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; for women; for orphans devastated by war; and for Vietnamese refugees. Her best known works in this category are The Story of Woo Viet and Boat People – 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 1990 film My American Grandson.
Hui's concern for regular people, and especially women, became the most common theme in her films. She creates stories of the experiences of women. One of her most personal works is Song of the Exile, a semi-autobiographical film about family connections and identity. It depicts the story of a young woman, Cheung Hueyin, returning to Hong Kong for her sister's wedding after studying film in London for several years. Hueyin and her mother, who is Japanese, do not seem to have a steady relationship. As the film follows Hueyin's journey to her mother's home town in Japan, Hueyin and her mother are forced to re-examine their relationship, as both have been uprooted from their own countries. "Its narratives of migration also spoke to the displacement of the Hong Kong people as they left the colony in panic to escape the impending Chinese rule." The film won both the Hong Kong Film Awards and Golden Horse Award for Best Director. She served as the president of the Hong Kong Film Directors' Guild in 2004.
In the 1990s, Hui worked on more commercial films. She directed fewer films herself, as she focused on behind-the-scenes work for other filmmakers. The theme of displacement still recurs in her work. During the mid-1990s, Hui started a film project about the Tiananmen Square massacre and the reactions of Hong Kong citizens, but the project was not completed due to lack of funding. Throughout her career, Hui has taken chances to develop more intense and ambitious films while making a name for herself.
Hui said in an interview that she wanted to do more socially conscious projects. She knew the difficulties of finding projects that would do that and "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 analyse the social issues involved. Hui is known for making controversial films; the interview, in particular, described the horrors of increased crime and unemployment rates in Tin Shui Wai, Hong Kong. Two of her films that focus on these issues are The Way We Are and Night and Fog, while maintaining a motif of displacement.
The 45th annual Hong Kong International Film Festival was held in April 2021. Hui was one of the six veteran Hong Kong filmmakers who directed Johnnie To Kei-Fung's highly anticipated anthology film: Septet: The Story of Hong Kong. The other filmmakers were Sammo Hung, Ringo Lam, Patrick Tam Kar-Ming, Tsui Hark, Yuen Woo-ping and Johnnie To. The short films were shot entirely on 35 mm film; each touches on a nostalgic and moving story set across different time periods, with each an ode to the city.
Vietnam Trilogy
"Collectively, the three have been named the 'Trilogy of Vietnam', as they all focus on problems involving Vietnam. They are about the tragic destinies of displaced individuals seeking a place to which they can belong and who are struggling in a period of changes, leading in the end to failure."Boy from Vietnam is the first film of Hui's Vietnam Trilogy. It chronicles a teenager's illegal entry to Hong Kong and adjustment to life in the city. "As the boy locates his brother, who is already in Hong Kong, moves from a safe house and takes up work, Hui and writers Shu Kei and Wong Chi carefully shed light on the hardships immigrants face in Hong Kong. The new home, it turns out, is no promised land for refugees but more a transit point on a journey elsewhere, and a place where injustice and prejudice are common." This film is historical: in the late 1970s, a large number of Vietnamese boat people illegally immigrated to Hong Kong. This film describes the experience of those who risked their lives in Hong Kong, and shows the setbacks, discrimination and exploitation they experienced when they were only teens.
In 1981, The Story of Woo Viet continued to examine the problem of Vietnamese boat people. Woo Viet, an overseas Chinese from Vietnam, smuggles himself into Hong Kong after trying many times. He gets a pen pal from Hong Kong to help him start over in the United States. However, he is stuck in the Philippines as a hired killer for saving his love. This film describes the hardship of smuggling, the memories of war, the sinister nature of refugee camps, and the crisis in Chinatown.
In 1982, the People's Republic of China, having just ended a war with Vietnam, permitted Hui to film on Hainan Island. Boat People set in 1978, after the Communist Party began its rule over Vietnam, through the point of view of a Japanese photojournalist, Shiomi Akutagawa, showed the condition of society and political chaos after the Vietnam War. Boat People was the first Hong Kong movie filmed in Communist China. Hui saved a role for Chow Yun-fat, but because at that time Hong Kong actors working in mainland China were banned in Taiwan, Chow Yun-fat declined the role out of fear of being blacklisted. Six months before filming was set to start, and after the film crew was already on location in Hainan, a cameraman suggested that Hui give the role to Andy Lau. At that time, Lau was still a newcomer in the Hong Kong film industry. Hui gave Lau the role and flew him to Hainan before a proper audition or even seeing what he looked like.
Transition from television to film
Hui left television in 1979, making her first feature, The Secret, a mystery thriller based on a real-life murder case and starring Taiwanese star Sylvia Chang. It was immediately hailed as an important film in the Hong Kong New Wave. The Spooky Bunch was her take on the ghost story genre, while The Story of Woo Viet continued her Vietnam Trilogy. Hui experimented with special effects and daring angles; her preoccupation with sensitive political and social issues is a recurrent feature in most of her subsequent films. Boat People, the third part of her Vietnam Trilogy, is the most famous of her early films. It examines the plight of the Vietnamese after the Vietnam War.In the mid-1980s Hui continued her string of critically acclaimed works. Love in a Fallen City was based on a novella by Eileen Chang, and the two-part, ambitious wuxia adaptation of Louis Cha's first novel, The Book and the Sword, was divided into The Romance of Book and Sword and Princess Fragrance. In 1990, one of her most important works to date, the semi-autobiographical The Song of Exile, was released. The film looks into the loss of identity, disorientation and despair faced by an exiled mother and a daughter faced with clashes in culture and historicity. As in the film, Hui's mother was Japanese.