The Cinema of Ann Hui
Aesthetics, Gender, and Displacement
The Cinema of Ann Hui
Aesthetics, Gender, and Displacement
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Description
A central figure in Hong Kong cinema since her debut with The Secret (1979), Ann Hui was awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the 77th Venice International Film Festival in 2020. This book explores her distinctive narrative strategies and visual style, with particular attention to gender representation and the depiction of displacement within diasporic communities.
Bringing together essays by an international group of contributors, the volume offers a comprehensive analysis of Hui's filmmaking, from early televisual works such as The Boy from Vietnam (1978), to her recent documentary Elegies (2023). The chapters situate her formal and aesthetic choices within the specific historical and cultural conditions of Hong Kong and its film industry, demonstrating how her cinema is shaped by, and responds to, these contexts.
The book also explores Hui's sustained engagement with gender and sexuality in films including Summer Snow (1995), All About Love (2010) and Our Time Will Come (2017), underscoring her creative agency as a female auteur. By reworking Chinese aesthetic traditions to reimagine femininity and female subjectivity, Hui's films are positioned here as open-ended and multifaceted. In doing so, the volume deepens our understanding of Hong Kong and Chinese-language cinema, the representation of women on screen, and the ongoing reconfiguration of Hong Kong's cultural identity through the work of a globally recognised filmmaker.
Table of Contents
I Narrative and Aesthetics
1. The Experimentality in Narrative: The Aesthetics and Cultural Identity in Ann Hui's Films - Chao Zhou (Ohio University, USA)
2. Narrative and Narrational Strategies in Ann Hui's The Way We Are (2008) - Gary Bettinson (Lancaster University, UK)
3. Rethinking Realism in Early Ann Hui's Televisual Work Boy from Vietnam (1978) - Raymond Tsang (University of Southern California, USA)
4. 'Remember My Name': Songs of the Book and Sword in Exile in Ann Hui's Historical Cinema - Faye Hui Xiao (University of Kansas, USA)
5. Uncanny Aesthetics and the Sonic Horror in The Secret (1979) - Jiadi (Jady) Jiang (University of Southampton, UK)
6. Reconstructing Hong Kong's Surroundings: Subtle Intervention, Self-Narrative, and Close Observation in Ann Hui's Documentaries - Zhaoyu Zhu
II Gender and Femininity
7. Women, Space, Landscape: Classical Painting in Ann Hui's Love in a Fallen City (1984) -Dailin Zhao (Renmin University, China)
8. Struggling in Between: Hong Kong Women as Postcolonial Subjects in Ann Hui's Summer Snow (1995) - Yiran Ai (University of Birmingham, UK)
9. The Female Body of Qi: Redefining Feminist Cinema Through Ann Hui's Tin-Shu-Wai Diptych - Weiting Fan (Chongqing University, China)
10. Reconstructing Sinophone Queerness: Representations of Female Queer Communities in Ann Hui's All About Love (2010) - Xueyan Cheng (National University of Singapore, Singapore)
11. An Alternative Resistance Story: Female Subjectivity, Theatricality and the Ambiguity of Mainland-Hong Kong Geopolitics in Ann Hui's Our Time Will Come (2017) - Han Li (Rhodes College, USA)
III Displacement: Postcoloniality, Homeland, and Diaspora
12. The Position of Hong Kong: On Material, Space and Memory in Ann Hui's Vietnam Trilogy - Siao-Yun Chen (National Chung-Hsing University, Taiwan)
13. Exile or Vacation? Homeland in Ann Hui's Song of the Exile (1990) and My American Grandson (1991) - Louise Suk Man YIP (University of Heidelberg, Germany)
14. Beyond Failed Adaptation: A Postcolonial Contextual Rereading of Ann Hui's Film Adaptations of Eileen Chang - Gabriel F. Y. Tsang (Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong)
15. Postcolonial Aging, Amah, and Diaspora in A Simple Life (2011) - Jessica K. Chan (University of Richmond, USA)
16. Displacement and Alienation: Reading Xiaohong's Life of Exile through Ann Hui's The Golden Era (2014) - Chenfeng Wang (University of California, San Diego, USA)
Endnotes
Bibliography
Product details
| Published | 03 Sep 2026 |
|---|---|
| Format | Hardback |
| Edition | 1st |
| Extent | 288 |
| ISBN | 9781350514447 |
| Imprint | Bloomsbury Academic |
| Illustrations | 30 bw illus |
| Dimensions | 234 x 156 mm |
| Series | Global East Asian Screen Cultures |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
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