IFFIK 2024: Ann Hui: A career spanning independent cinema to the mainstream

Ann Hui
| Photo Credit: S.R.Praveen

Anyone trying to slot Hong Kong filmmaker Ann Hui into a particular genre will be at a loss, for all through her 45 year-long career, she has moved easily between varied spaces, from independent cinema to the mainstream, from personal films to a bit of action too. For that matter, she has made a horror film too. Ask her about it and the 77-year old, who was conferred with the 29th International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK)‘s Lifetime achievement award, says with disarming candour that she was just trying to see what she was good at.

“I don’t sort of start with wanting to do something very badly or I have something very important which I have to say. I just enjoy making films. I like the activity, to work with other people, to start with an idea and see how it generates. I just like that process. So at least in the first phase of my career, I was trying to look for what I am good at and what I can shoot. Gradually I found that I am very good at portraying people’s relationships and also a little of social issues. I tried to do more of such films later,” says Hui, in an interview to The Hindu.

She feels that the moment she finds a comfort zone, she tends to start repeating herself, something which she had guarded against. As a young person caught between contrasting cultures, between the British who ruled Hong Kong till 1997 and mainland China, she had to grapple with both cultures which informed her identity.

“I think I personally identified with both English and Chinese cultures. I like the literature of both cultures. But I tend to like the Western way of life more because my education is Western. The first time I went to China was when I was 25. I didn’t know about China except through what I read. I thought it was the same because the language is the same, but it was not. If there is a discrepancy between two cultures, you can either be cynical and feel like someone caught between the two worlds or you can be tolerant, accept things which are different and try to reconcile. I belong to the latter,” she says.

She dealt with issues of identity in Song of the Exile (1990), which was based on her experiences during her film studies in London. One of the notable works of her early career was the Vietnam trilogy beginning with the Boat People (1982), which highlighted the plight of a people in a nation which was till a few years ago ravaged by wars. It was one of the rare times when her films strayed into political territory, from which she usually stays away from.

“To be honest, I really don’t know much about politics. I am not into that type of thinking at all. But it is very strange that with some of the films I have made, like Boat People, there was a big controversy about my political stance. That was really foreign to me. It was not an attack on the Vietnam government in the first place, but everybody took it that way. I was talking about the people’s predicament,” says Hui.

The trajectory of Hong Kong cinema in recent years has been a bit concerning for her, as she thinks it has already lost a good part of its market.

“In the 1980s and 90s, Hong Kong cinema had its golden age. But now it is really struggling because Hong Kong has lost all its South East Asia market. Every country in the region which showed Hong Kong films now shows their own films. Hong Kong films are not very popular in mainland China as well because they have their own films of good quality. Our films are mostly distributed only in Hong Kong which only has a population of seven million and they don’t watch films very often either,” she says.

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After all these years of making films on a range of subjects, she thinks there is a subject she has always wanted to take up, but failed to – about mental illnesses and nervous breakdowns. She is still looking for the right kind of story to make that film. Meanwhile, she is now more concerned about the ways in which to communicate with the young through her movies.

“I belong to the people who move in and out of old age homes. I am 77. I am very different from the person I was before, both in terms of energy levels, health and social contacts. Filmmaking is difficult too, because the audience are mostly young people and they don’t think the same way about relationships or love or marriage or any other matter. But I don’t mind because I have already had my chances and I don’t mind if I can’t shoot anymore. I would just be very happy to sit back and look at what people are doing and appreciate it. Because I have done very little of that as I was so busy working,” says Hui.