Ann Hui - The Chinese Cinema

The Chinese Cinema

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Ann Hui

A collection of 12 posts

2024 Festival Compilation

2024 Festival Compilation

As I've done for the last couple of years, here is a collection of the reviews I wrote this year for InReview Online's coverage of various film festivals from around the world (Rotterdam, Cannes, the New York Asian Film Festival, Venice, Toronto, and the New York

July Rhapsody (Ann Hui, 2002)

July Rhapsody (Ann Hui, 2002)

The Cantonese title for Ann Hui’s July Rhapsody translates roughly as “A Man at 40”, the English title apparently being a riff on the May-December concept, although specifically focusing on only one person in the age gap relationship, the man halfway through his life. The movie itself is more

Visible Secret (Ann Hui, 2001)

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Visible Secret (Ann Hui, 2001)

Septet: The Story of Hong Kong (Various, 2020)

The 36th Chamber

Septet: The Story of Hong Kong (Various, 2020)

It’s hard to imagine how long I’ve been talking about the film that would eventually become Septet: The Story of Hong Kong. The first time I tweeted about it appears to have been August of 2017, although that tweet is phrased as a reminder, which means I must

The King of Wuxia (Lin Jing-jie, 2022)

The King of Wuxia (Lin Jing-jie, 2022)

Joining the ever-expanding pantheon of great Chinese filmmakers given the full-length documentary treatment is King Hu, the man behind many of the most accomplished and influential action films of all-time. But while Johnnie To, Ann Hui, Hou Hsiao-hsien, and Jia Zhangke are still very much alive and working, and thus

2022 Spring/Summer Festival Compilation

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2022 Spring/Summer Festival Compilation

Love After Love (Ann Hui, 2020)

Love After Love (Ann Hui, 2020)

Love After Love is director Ann Hui’s third adaptation of a story by Eileen Chang, following 1984’s Love in a Fallen City and 1997’s Eighteen Springs. I haven’t seen the latter, but Love in a Fallen City is one of my favorite of her films, a

Notes on Filmspotting’s Contemporary Chinese Cinema Marathon

Notes on Filmspotting’s Contemporary Chinese Cinema Marathon

A few weeks ago, Adam and Josh at the Filmspotting [https://www.filmspotting.net/] podcast invited me to help curate a selection of 2010s Chinese-language movies for them to talk about on their show. I was more than happy to help, as I’ve been a fan of the show

Ann Hui Capsule Reviews

Ann Hui Capsule Reviews

The Secret (1979) — July 29, 2019 In America this would have been followed by at least two more imitation movies where Sylvia Chang solves spooky murders, of declining quality and increasing morbidity, directed by men of course and not Ann Hui, whose debut this was. But they weren’t in

Our Time Will Come (Ann Hui, 2017)

Our Time Will Come (Ann Hui, 2017)

The most anticipated, and almost assuredly the best, World War II film of the summer, by one of the greatest filmmakers of the past forty years, opens here tomorrow exclusively at the Pacific Place: director Ann Hui’s Our Time Will Come . Based on true events in the resistance against

Zodiac Killers (Ann Hui, 1991)

Zodiac Killers (Ann Hui, 1991)

A somewhat misleading title, as the movie doesn’t have anything to do with a Zodiac, or really even any Killers. Instead this 1991 film is a portrait of Chinese students in Tokyo leading desperately miserable lives. Directed by the great New Wave filmmaker Ann Hui, it was apparently [http:

Boat People (Ann Hui, 1982)

Boat People (Ann Hui, 1982)

Revolution is war is hell. Something in the air with the Hong Kong New Wave and Japanese leftists in 1982. Patrick Tam’s Nomad envisions the United Red Army as psychotic dead-enders while Ann Hui here depicts an idealistic photojournalist who sees past the Potemkin images provided for him by