Ann Hui: Career spanning from independent cinema to mainstream

Finally happened. Photo Courtesy: S.R.Praveen

Anyone trying to pin Hong Kong filmmaker Ann Hui into a particular genre would be at a loss, as over the course of her 45-year-long career, she has moved seamlessly between different spaces, from independent cinema to the mainstream, from individual films to somewhat Has gone. Also of action. He has also made a horror film in this matter. Ask her about it and the 77-year-old, who was honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 29th International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK), candidly says she was just trying to see what she was good at .

“I don’t start out wanting to do something very badly or have something very important I have to say. I just enjoy making films. I love this activity, working with other people, starting with an idea and seeing how it arises. I just love that process. So at least in the first phase of my career, I was trying to see what I was good at and what I could shoot. Gradually I discovered that I was very good at portraying people’s relationships and some social issues. “I tried to do more films like this later,” Hui said in an interview. The Hindu.

She feels that as soon as she finds a comfortable zone, she starts repeating herself, something she had avoided. As a young person, she was caught between the contrasting cultures of the British, who ruled Hong Kong until 1997, and mainland China, having to grapple with both cultures that informed her identity.

“I feel personally connected to both English and Chinese cultures. I like literature from both cultures. But I like western lifestyle more because my education is western. I first went to China when I was 25 years old. I didn’t know anything about China except what I read. I thought it was the same because the language was the same, but it wasn’t. If there is a discrepancy between two cultures, you can either be cynical and feel as if one is caught between two worlds or you can be tolerant, accepting of things that are different and Can try to achieve harmony. I belong to the latter,” she says.

He dealt with identity issues song of exile (1990), which was based on his experiences while studying film in London. One of the notable works of his early career was the Vietnam Trilogy which began boat people (1982), which highlighted the plight of the people in a nation that until a few years earlier had been ravaged by wars. This was one of the rare times when her films ventured into political territory, which she usually stays away from.

“To be honest, I don’t really know much about politics. I am not of that kind of thinking at all. But it’s very strange that I have made some films, like boat peopleThere was a big controversy regarding my political stance. That was really foreign to me. It was not an attack on the Vietnamese government at first, but everyone took it that way. I was talking about the plight of the people,” says Hui.

The pace of Hong Kong cinema in recent years has been a bit worrying for him, as he feels that 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 its entire Southeast Asia market. Every country in the region that used to show Hong Kong films now shows its own films. Hong Kong films are not very popular in mainland China even though their own films are of good quality. Our films are mostly distributed in Hong Kong, which has a population of only seven million and doesn’t watch films very often,” she says.

After making films on various subjects for so many years, she feels there is one subject she always wanted to take up but failed to do so – about mental illnesses and nervous breakdowns. He is still looking for the right kind of story to make that film. Meanwhile, he is now more concerned about ways to communicate with the youth through his films.

“I am one of those people who keeps coming and going to old age homes. I am 77 years old. I am very different from the person I was before, both in terms of energy levels, health and social contacts. Filmmaking is also difficult because the audience is mostly young and they do not think the same about relationships or love or marriage or any other matter. But I don’t mind because I already have opportunities and I don’t mind if I can’t shoot anymore. I’m more than happy to just sit back and watch what people are doing and appreciate it. “Because I was so busy with work, I did very little work,” Hui says.