Ann Hui

At 76 years old, Ann Hui has this physical status:

Ann Hui On-wah, MBE, BBS (born 23 May 1947), is a Hong Kong film director, producer, screenwriter, and actress.

She is one of Hong Kong's most well-known filmmakers, particularly in the 1970s and 1980s.

In Hong Kong, she is well-known for her films focusing on Hong Kong's social problems.

Her film projects include literary adaptation, martial arts masterpieces, semi-autobiographical works, feminist politics, socioeconomic transitions, and even thrillers.

She served as the president of the Hong Kong Film Director's Guild from 2004 to 2006.Hui has received numerous accolades for her films.

She received Golden Horse Awards (GHA) for Best Director three times (1999, 2011, 2011; Best Film at the Asia Pacific Film Festival, 2005, and 2018).

Only two films were selected for Grand Slam Film Awards (means a film was nominated for best picture, best screenplay, and best actress and actress at the same time), and Summer Snow and A Simple Life are Ann Hui's two films received Grand Slam awards.

At the 2012 Asian Film Awards, she was recognized for her lifetime contributions.

Hui was invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) in 2017.

Early life

Hui was born in Anshan, a Chinese iron-mining town in Liaoning Province, on May 23rd 1947. Hui's mother was Japanese, and her father was Chinese. In 1952, Hui migrated to Macau and then Hong Kong at the age of five. Hui was a student at St. Paul's Convent School. She grew up in an old-fashioned Chinese family. Hui learned to recite many ancient Chinese poems as her grandfather and father both love classical literature. Ann Hui served as an extra in college, doing busier duties and designing posters. She would go to the theater to see a movie if she had trouble she couldn't solve.

Education

Hui obtained a master's degree in English and comparative literature from the University of Hong Kong in 1972. Hui spent two years at the London Film School. Hui penned an essay about Alain Robbe-Grillet, a French writer and filmmaker, as a researcher and filmmaker.

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Career

After returning to Hong Kong after her stay in London, Hui became an assistant to the leading Chinese film producer, King Hu. She began assisting Television Broadcasting Limited (TVB) as a scriptwriter-director and producer of documentaries including 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 group established to clean up government misdeeds. Two of these films were so controversial that they were outlawed. Hui produced three episodes of Below the Lion Rock, a documentary series about people from Hong Kong that was produced by a public radio broadcasting station, Radio Television Hong Kong. Boy from Vietnam (1978), which is the start of Hui's Vietnam Trilogy, is the most well-known episode of her Hui's history.

Hui produced her first feature-length film, The Secret, in 1979, presenting photographs from the gloomy and dreary old Western District's worn-out mansions, shadowy alleys, fallen leaves, and religious ceremonies, including the traditional process of freeing the soul from purgatory by burning paper money and cutting off the head of a chicken. Hui was given a Golden Horse Award for Best Feature Film for the Secret.

Hui's career in the 1980s was expanding globally. Eastern incarnations of Hollywood gangster and action films were among the most popular films of the decade. Hui did not follow the trend and produced more personal films. Many of her best films dealt with societal displacement. Particularly, her central characters are often forced to migrate to another country where they are unable to learn and survive. Hui discusses the characters' reactions to new settings and their reactions to returning home. The majority of her films in this "New Wave" period are sharp and tough, with satirical and political metaphors, expressing her pity for people; for orphanages as a result of war; and for Vietnamese refugees. The Story of Woo Viet (1981) and Boat People (1982) – the remaining two chapters of her Vietnam Trilogy – are two of her best-known works in this segment. Best Film and Best Director were recognized by the Hong Kong Film Awards for Best Film and Best Director. Although Hui has directed some generic films, her other common theme in her 1990 film My American Grandson is family violence.

Hui's concern for regular people, and especially women, became the most common theme in her films. She writes stories about women's experiences. Song of the Exile (1990), a semi-autobiographical film about family relations and identity, is one of her most personal works. After attending film in London for many years, it portrays a young woman, Cheung Hueyin, returning to Hong Kong for her sister's wedding. Hueyin and her mother, who is Japanese, do not appear to have a strained friendship. Hueyin and her mother's home town in Japan are forced to reexamine their relationship after being uprooted from their own countries, as the film follows Hueyin's journey to her mother's hometown town in Japan. "Its tales of migration also related to the emigration of the Hong Kong people as they left the colony in a hysterical attempt to escape the impending Chinese emperor." Both the Hong Kong Film Awards and the Golden Horse Award for Best Director were given to the film. In 2004, she was president of the Hong Kong Film Directors' Guild.

Hui worked on more commercial films in the 1990s. She made fewer films herself as she concentrated on behind-the-scenes work for other filmmakers. In her art, the theme of displacement persists. Hui started a film project about the Tiananmen Square massacre and the reactions of Hong Kong residents during the 1990s, but the project was not completed due to a lack of funding. Hui has had the opportunity to produce more polished and beautiful films throughout her career, while still making a name for herself.

In an interview, Hui said that she intends to undertake more socially conscious initiatives. She understands the challenges of finding projects that will do that and "attract investors as well as appeal to the public." Her aim was to "show something that is watchable and at the same time appealing" and encourage the public to investigate the social issues implicated. Hui is well-known for making controversial films; the film in particular referred to the terrors of rising crime and unemployment in Tin Shui Wai, Hong Kong. The Way We Are (2008) and Night and Fog (2009), two of her films that focus on these topics, while still maintaining a theme of displacement.

In April 2021, the 45th annual Hong Kong International Film Festival was held in Hong Kong. Hui is one of the six veteran Hong Kong filmmakers who produced Johnnie To Kei-Fung's highly awaited anthology film, the Story of Hong Kong (2021). Sammo Hung, Ringo Lam, Patrick Tam Kar-Ming, Tsui Hark, Yuen Woo-ping, and Johnnie To was among the other filmmakers on the show. The short films were shot entirely on 35 mm film; each film focuses on a nostalgic and moving tale set in time periods; each film includes an ode to the city.

"The three 'Trilogy of Vietnam' have been referred to in a variety of ways, because they all focus on problems involving Vietnam." They are about displaced people who are searching for a home to which they can belong and who are suffering in a period of transition that has resulted in the demise of failure."

Boy from Vietnam (1978) is Hui's first film of Hui's Vietnam Trilogy. It chronicles a teenager's unlawful arrival in Hong Kong and his subsequent integration into the city. "As the boy discovers his brother, who is now in Hong Kong, flees from a safe house and starts work, Hui and writers Shu Kei and Wong Chi specifically shed light on the hardships immigrants face in Hong Kong." The new home, it turns out, is not a promised land for refugees, but more of a journey elsewhere and a place where injustice and bigotry are common." This film is historic: A large number of Vietnamese boat people illegally immigrated to Hong Kong in the late 1970s. This film chronicles people who risked their lives in Hong Kong and shows the setbacks, misogyny, and abuse they suffered when they were just teenagers.

The Story of Woo Viet continued in 1981 to address the Vietnamese boat people's suffering. After trying many times, Woo Viet, an overseas Chinese of Vietnam, smuggles himself into Hong Kong. He has a pen pal from Hong Kong to help him start over in the United States. On the other hand, he is stranded in the Philippines as a hired killer for saving his love. This film depicts the ardent frustrations of smuggling, the wartime memories, the sinister presence of refugees, and the chaos in Chinatown.

Hui was allowed to film on Hainan Island in 1982, since the People's Republic of China had just ended a war with Vietnam. Boat People (1982) — Set in 1978, after the Communist Party ruled Vietnam, through the eyes of a Japanese photojournalist, Shiomi Akutagawa, revealed the state of society and political instability after the Vietnam War. Boat People was the first Hong Kong film to be shot in Communist China. Hui kept a role for Chow Yun-fat, but because Hong Kong actors working in mainland China were barred from doing so at that time, Chow Yun-fat stopped working in Taiwan, Chow Yun-fat resigned, Chow Yun-fat resigned from the position. Hui suggested that the role be given to Andy Lau six months before filming was supposed to begin, but that the film crew was already on location in Hainan. Lau was still a newcomer to Hong Kong's film industry at the time. Hui gave Lau the role and flew him to Hainan before a proper audition or even seeing what he looked like.

Hui stopped television in 1979, making her first film, The Secret, a true life murder case based on real life murder case and starring Taiwanese actress Sylvia Chang. It was immediately recognized as a critical film in the Hong Kong New Wave. The Spooky Bunch (1981) was her first attempt at the ghost story genre, while Woo Viet (1981) continued her Vietnam Trilogy. Hui tried out special effects and daring angles; her preoccupation with controversial political and social issues is a recurring feature in most of her later films. Boat People (1982), the third part of her Vietnam Trilogy's trilogy, is the most well-known of her early films. It looks at the Vietnamese people's after the Vietnam War's plight.

Hui's prolific works in the mid-1980s flourished. Love in a Fallen City (1984) was based on a novella by Eileen Chang, and Louis Cha's first book, The Book and the Sword, was divided into two parts, The Romance of Book and Sword (1987) and Princess Fragrance (1987). The semi-autobiographical The Song of Exile, one of her finest creations to date, was published in 1990. The film explores identity, disorientation, and despair facing an exiled mother and a daughter confronted with cultural and historical conflict. Hui's mother was Japanese, as in the film.

Hui returned to television after a brief hiatus in which she returned briefly to television, with Summer Snow (1995), about a middle-aged woman struggling with everyday family challenges and an Alzheimer-inflicted father-in-law. She appeared on the jury at the 46th Berlin International Film Festival in 1996.

This book, Eighteen Springs (1997), retells another Eileen Chang book. The Golden Horse Awards' Best Feature, Her Ordinary Heroes (1999), about Chinese and Hong Kong political activists from 1970s to 1990s, received the Best Feature category.

In 2002, her May Rhapsody, the companion film to Summer Snow about a middle-aged male teacher struggling with a mid-life crisis, received good feedback in Hong Kong and elsewhere. Jade Goddess of Mercy (2003), starring Zhao Wei and Nicholas Tse, was based on a Chinese writer Hai Yan's book.

Hui produced The Way We Are a popular domestic drama in 2008. Hui recalls being on The Way We Are Being the same as her "earlier TVB days" when she was writing on The Way We Are.

Night and Fog followed the Way We Are followed by Day and Fog. "The two films revolve around the daily life of the inhabitants of Tin Shui Wai's public housing blocks." "I think this film represents something about Hong Kong specifically" in an interview with Muse magazine. "I think this film reflects something; it could say a lot about the middle and lower class, as well as Hong Kong as a whole. Everyone can eat at McDonald's or in malls. That's a way of life, but there's a lot of dissatisfaction with families on welfare. They have no worries about their personal lives, but there is an alarming sense of sadness.

The Simple Life (2011) premiered at the Venice International Film Festival, where it was nominated for the Golden Lion. Ah Tao (Deanie Ip) and Roger (Andy Lau) are two main characters in the film's story revolves around two people, Ah Tao (Deanie Ip) and Roger (Andy Lau). It's a tale about a master and his long-serving servant and it was based on producer Roger Lee's personal friendship with his servant. The film was chosen as Hong Kong's entry to the Academy Awards, but it didn't make it to the shortlist. Before finding Andy Lau, Hui could not afford to film A Simple Life. "You make a film and a lot of people ask why you do it," the singer says. This time, I was taken by one person's behavior, not the script." "Because she has always shot a very authentic Hong Kong theme, the reaction on the mainland will not be very positive," Andy Lau said. "I haven't had enough funds for a long time," Hui said when she visited him.

Can you help me?"

Andy Lau said it touched him. "I'm so sad." Aren't you afraid to lose money when making a movie, they say? It's not the most popular, and it's not the most popular, but it's a lot of people get up, maybe it's the script, and the numerous little drops add up to make me do it. I work hard to make money every day, so I won't be stupid." Before Yu Dong (the president of Bona Film Group Limited) took office, he invested 30 million yuan. "Both the producer and I wanted the film to come out, so we estimated the effort and used it to produce, but we forgot it was just my salary, so we counted it as finding someone to play with me for two months."

At the 71st Venice International Film Festival, Hui's 2014 film The Golden Era premiered out of competition. It was a biopic based on writers Xiao Hong and Xiao Jun's lives. Tang Wei and Feng Shaofeng appeared in the film.

Our Time Will Come (Chinese: ) is a 2017 war film starring Zhou Xun, Eddie Peng, and Wallace Huo. It revolves around the resistance movement during Japan's conquest of Hong Kong. "Fictionalized from real life, the sumptuously photographed drama centers on Lan (Zhou Xun), a teacher before the Japanese closed the local schools, according to Mark Jenkins. The teenage girl is recruited by the rebels' swashbuckler leader after she helps smuggle out a noted author (Guo Tao). Lan eventually learns that her ex (Wallace Huo Chienhwa) has invaded the occupation headquarters, where she addresses classical Chinese poetry with a Japanese officer (Masatoshi Nagase, who also portrayed another poetry lover in 'Paterson'). On July 1, 2017, the film opened in China to commemorate and coincide with the 20th anniversary of Hong Kong's handover from the United Kingdom to China.

Keep Rolling, a 2021 documentary film, gives an insight into her personal life.

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