Ann Hui ON-Wah is a famous Hong Kong director and occasional screenwriter; mainly create her works of the film with current social issues with females’ perspective. She is the only female who has been honored “Best Director” in Hong Kong Film Awards for five times. Her filming characteristic is not aggressive and hegemony. She softly and passively uses movie plot to show the past Hong Kong history, the value of the humanity and the changing of social value. Female’s image is her main theme describing the lowest social-classes personality or cultural background. Most of her female characters are independent, staunch, responsible and efficient. When we watch her works of film, it is not obvious to find that most of the story is telling her own past experience. Using the issue of female social image, she wants to show the female’s life difficulties and unavoidable negative discrimination from the society.
Why does Ann prefer to use “female” as the main theme of the plot? Her early life may give us some hints. She was born in Anshan in 1947. In 1952, she moved to Macau with his Chinese father and Japanese mother. She experienced that the social discrimination for female when she was a child. As her mother is Japanese who do not know how to speak and recognize Chinese and Cantonese, the other local Chinese treated her mother with tremendous of misunderstandings. To show her mother’s story, Ann directed a semi-fictionalized autobiography “Song of the Exile (客途秋恨)” in 1990. The story is very simple. The main character Cheung Hue yin disliked her mother’s lifestyle which was gambling and drinking when she moved back to Macau from London. When she moved back to live with her mother, she finally accepted her mother’s Japanese heritage and reached an understanding with her mother. In her interview from some TV program, she mentioned, “even though life is difficult, we still have to live optimistically.”
Different with other female directors, Ann Hui promotes “feminism” in an introverted way. As movie language is social cultural production, audiences are affected each other imperceptibly. Ann’s film gives the audience a familiar ‘strangeness’ which give audience space to think the female’s difficulties in seeking help and fair position in the workplace. Ann’s story proves that female has the ability to be strong, brave and independent even though she stays in male’s “profession aspect” which is easily failed.
‘If you put yourself into failure, you never have the power looking up the star on the sky. The brightness of star stays into your eyes forever.’ When she spoke this speech, her eyes are still fully having passion.
Written by Wong Wing Cheong