Ann Hui

From Boat People (1982) to Our Time Will Come (2017), from family struggles to anti-Japanese history, Venice Career Golden Lion-winning auteur Ann Hui finally films a topic she holds most dear – poetry. Through her personal encounters with some of Hong Kong’s most notable poets, Hui shows the topography of contemporary poetry on and of the city. Two poles of reality, the unrestrained Huang Canran and the cosmopolitan Liu Wai-tong, are juxtaposed to reveal two distinctively different personalities, ideals, and ways of life. Seeing the late Xi Xi recite her own poem about the old Kai Tak Airport is a deeply heart-warming moment.

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A seven-part anthology film exploring the history of Hong Kong from the 1940s to present day.

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The film tells the story of a young girl who travels from Shanghai to Hong Kong in pursuit of education, but ends up working for her aunt seducing rich and powerful men.

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In Japanese-occupied Hong Kong, a school teacher and her would-be-fiancé link up with Chinese guerrilla fighters, forging their own path to freedom.

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The story of writer Xiao Hong comes alive through memories of her great love affair, literary influence and escape from China during World War II.

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A 20mins short film commissioned by Hong Kong International Film Festival 2012. Starring Francis Ng and Jade Leung - about a pre-op transsexual woman nervously waiting for her operation.

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A collection of shorts by four East Asian directors: Ann Hui on a male-to-female sex change, Kim Tae-yong on an emotional imposture, Gu Changwei on pregnancy in China and Tsai Ming-Liang on time and the city of Hong Kong.

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After suffering a stroke, an altruistic maid announces that she wants to quit her job and move into an old people's home.

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Two former lovers rebuild a relationship after running into each other at a service for single pregnant women.

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A troubled marriage fueled by the husband's jealousy, abuse, and financial struggles takes a dark turn as he becomes increasingly controlling, and subjects his wife to unbearable torment.

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Cheung, a single mother living in an area with high crime rates, works hard to provide for her son while helping out her elderly neighbor.

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Ye Rutang, a single-living woman in her late fifties, struggles to maintain a dignified life amid the dangers of Shanghai.

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Yang Rui falls in love for the cleaning woman who works in a taekwando gym, only to later discover she's an undercover cop named An Xin. An is in hiding from drug smugglers who have a score to settle with her - a raid she led resulted in the death of one of the smuggler's parents. To complicate matters further, An was previously romantically involved with the smuggler whose parents were killed.

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Outwardly, Lam takes pride in his job teaching Chinese literature at an elite school and in his caring wife and two sons. But deep down, the forty-year-old wrestles with unfulfilled desires stoked by jealousy over his friends’ professional successes and the advances of a flirtatious student. The sudden return of his former mentor finally upsets this delicate balance, forcing Lam to unearth the long-hidden truth about who he is and gain a new perspective on how to live the rest of his life.

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A man develops a relationship with a woman who has mysterious supernatural abilities.

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Ordinary Heroes narrates the life stories of an advocate, a prostitute, a social worker, and a priest during Hong Kong’s social movements of the 1970s and 1980s. The film is based on true events.

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In 1930s Shanghai, a young office girl falls in love with a factory worker in the same company.

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1997 documentary, part of the Taiwan-produced series "Personal Memoir of Hong Kong", is both a self-portrait and a depiction of Hong Kong during the 40 years preceding the handover by the United Kingdom to China.

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After moving to Hong Kong from China, a young martial artist starts a promising career as a stuntwoman. She begins to feel accepted in the business, but a passionate affair with a playboy ends up breaking her heart and unleashing her wild side.

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Tells the story of the relationship between a widower with Alzheimer's disease and his daughter-in-law, May Sun, who is a housewife in her forties trying cope with the upheavals in her family.

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1993 film

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A 12-year-old boy from America experiences the clash of cultures and the generation gap when he visits his grandfather in Shanghai.

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Hong Kong student Ben Lee becomes friends with his mainland Chinese classmate Chang Chih while studying abroad in Japan. Ben is unmotivated to study and only cares about money and on the other hand, whenever Chih encounters a Chinese person, he would ask whereabouts of his childhood sweetheart. Ming is also from Hong Kong and in order to elevate his social status, he becomes involved with a bar hostess and owner Yuriko, hoping to become Yakuza leader Yamada Ishikawa's brother in-law.

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Set in the early 1970s, it tells the story of a Chinese-Japanese student who returns to her native Hong Kong after graduating from a university in London. Once she arrives back home, she and her family begin to fight, largely due to cultural and societal conflicts between her mother and herself.

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As Cai Mei, a single 40 year old woman and a social worker starts a relationship with a teen-ager Tian-Ah, she remembers her relationship when she was young with her professor, a married man older than her.

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Princess Fragrance is a 1987 Hong Kong film based on Louis Cha's novel The Book and the Sword. The film is a sequel to The Romance of Book and Sword, which was released earlier in the same month and was also directed by Ann Hui.

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The story is based on the popular novel developed from folk legend. It goes that the Manchurian emperor Qianlong of China (circa 18th Century) was actually the son of a Han Chinese, the subject ethnicity. His brother of blood, Chen Jialuo just happened to be the chief of the Red Flower Society, an anti-Manchu secret society. Chen, a learned scholar, thought he could get his brother turn his back on the Manchu and restore the Han Chinese reign. But the story was ended by brutal clearence of the society members. It reflects one of the dark pages in Chinese culture, that ethics and humanity always become impotent when countered with power.

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Taking place in 1941, Love in a Fallen City centers on Pai, a young woman who has been ostracized by her family for divorcing her rich husband. A local match-maker, Mrs. Hsu, takes pity on Pai and decides to bring her to Hong Kong, under the guise of employing her as the Hsu's nanny, but in reality to introduce her to Fan. Pai and Fan seem to hit it off, but Fan's refusal to marry Pai soon sours things. However, as the Japanese begin to invade Hong Kong, the two begin to realize their true feelings for each other.

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A Japanese photojournalist revisits Vietnam after the liberation to document the nation, and begins following and documenting the young children from a poor Vietnamese family.

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Wu Viet is a Vietnamese refugee who wants to leave his country behind and start over in the United States. First, he must make his way to Hong Kong, but as he passes through Thailand, he meets a beautiful woman who travels with him. Wu and his new love end up in a refugee camp in Thailand, where they discover many of their countrymen are disappearing under mysterious circumstances. As Wu tries to learn the truth about what's happening, he discovers his life is in danger, and he must flee to the Philippines for safety.

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A Cantonese opera company is attacked by an army of ghosts, thanks to a feud between the dead grandfathers of one of the company's actresses and a young man.

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A tangled murder mystery unfolds amid a complex love triangle. As conflicting witness accounts emerge, the truth about the victim and key suspects is revealed, leading investigators down a dark and twisty path where nothing is as it seems.

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One of Ann Hui's most admired works for the small screen, The Bridge examines a complex web of bureaucracy, vested interests, disillusionment and grass-roots campaigning. The title refers to a footbridge closed for demolition by the government, effectively cutting the main route to and from a roadside shantytown and triggering further local issues.

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The second episode of Ann Hui and Yim Ho’s “ICAC” Series (1978) around bribery and corruption

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The life of the epoch-making master of martial arts cinema, King Hu.

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A seven-part anthology film exploring the history of Hong Kong from the 1940s to present day.

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One of Hong Kong's most influential filmmakers, Ann Hui, becomes a “star” for the first time in Man Lim-chung's directorial debut. A forerunner of the New Wave, Hui’s tumultuous, forty-year career is an unequivocal testimony to her unyielding dedication to filmmaking, and her expedition into the metamorphic city. This biopic probes into the acclaimed director’s idiosyncratic world, where we witness her rashness and goofiness, as well as her humanistic concerns for the everyday nobodies which make her films so moving.

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Set in Hong Kong in 1967 — a time of complex politics when it was still a British colony — No. 7 Cherry Lane revolves around a love triangle between a university student, a single mother and her teenage daughter.

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Documentary about China's film industry and the monumental changes in the past 40 years from beginning with propaganda films to the "5th generation" filmmakers and beyond, who embraced art and commercial films to make China the second largest box office market in the world after Hollywood.

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After her father died, a Hong Kong girl discovers she has two hitherto unknown sisters, one in Taiwan and one in China. To settle her father's debt, she must reunite with them to run the family's hot pot restaurant.

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Two bodies are recovered in a reservoir. They are of a married couple who now leaves behind two orphaned young adult children. When Angela, the cop tasked to investigate the deaths, breaks the news to the couple’s daughter Connie, Angela is stunned. Not only does the cool and undeterred Connie already know about the deaths, she claims she’s responsible for them. So begins the mystery, but also the relationship between confessor, whose tragic backstory we learn about in flashbacks, and her investigator, who has parental troubles of her own.

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After suffering a stroke, an altruistic maid announces that she wants to quit her job and move into an old people's home.

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A troubled marriage fueled by the husband's jealousy, abuse, and financial struggles takes a dark turn as he becomes increasingly controlling, and subjects his wife to unbearable torment.

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The newlyweds Jack and Ching move into a new apartment. Jack gets smacked by a car and goes into a coma, but a miraculous recovery occurs. Jack begins having visions of death around the house and he finds Ching has begun to act strangely. Jack relays his suspicions to Ching, but she thinks he might be "troubled". September, an female friend of Jack's, joins him on a fact-finding hunt. What they find isn't too comforting, as it seems that Ching may have more than a few secrets from her new husband

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