CFP: The Cinema of Ann Hui: Aesthetics, Politics, and Philosophy
Editors: Zhaoyu Zhu (University of Nottingham, Ningbo, China); Weiting Fan (Chongqing University Meishi Film Academy)
Ann Hui Oh-Wah has been one of the most important figures in Hong Kong film production since the Hong Kong New Wave. In 2020, she was awarded with the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the 77th Venice Film Festival. Except for Andrey Yue’s Ann Hui’s Song of the Exile (1990), there is rarely any book-length project dedicated to studying Hui’s cinema in the English-language academia. However, her prolific career spanning all over 40 years provides scholars with valuable resources to probe into the relationship between a filmmaker’s creativity and the vicissitudes of the Hong Kong cinema, especially in terms of the cinematic representation of Hong Kong’s diasporic communities’ experience of displacement under Hong Kong’s specific socio-political context. Indeed, as a female director, her works also inspire us to rethink the position of female filmmakers within the Chinese-language film industries and the representation of female subjectivity in Asian cinema. Besides, we also expect to invite scholars to read Hui’s works from innovative aesthetic perspectives, especially by re-appropriating non-western-centric philosophical concepts. We hope this edited collection can be a handbook for exploring Ann Hui’s oeuvre as a multifaceted entity, which further contributes to understanding Hui’s historical importance in Chinese cinemas and women’s filmmaking on the global screen.
This book invites chapters from multiple perspectives. Suggested topics include, but are not limited to:
- Ann Hui and The Hong Kong New Wave
- Ann Hui’s Televised Productions, such as episodes in Below the Lion Rock
- Genres in Ann Hui’s Films: Martial Arts Films, Melodrama, et cetera.
- Ann Hui’s Auteurist Styles
- Ann Hui’s Literary Adaptations
- Ann Hui and Representation of Everyday Life
- Ann Hui and Leftist Politics
- Representation of Migration and Displacement in Ann Hui’s Films
- Female Subjectivity in Ann Hui’s Films
- Ann Hui’s Post-CEPA Films
- Urban Landscape of Hong Kong in Ann Hui’s Films
- Ann Hui and History from the Below
- Ann Hui and Continental Philosophy
- Ann Hui and Chinese Aesthetics
- Ann Hui and Religious Thoughts
Editors:
Dr. Zhaoyu Zhu is a Teaching Fellow in Communication and Cultural Studies in University of Nottingham Ningbo, China. He received the SCMS Katherine Singer Kovács Essay Award in 2022. He widely writes about Chinese film history (particularly Chinese film technology), Chinese cinemas, and film festivals.
Dr. Weiting Fan is an assistant professor at Chongqing University Meishi Film Academy. She received her Ph.D. in film theory and film philosophy at King’s College London. She studied comparative literature at University of Hong Kong in her undergraduate years. Her research interests include East Asian cinema, Chinese film theory, and Chinese intellectual histories.
This proposed volume has received support from Bloomsbury as a part of the book series of Global East Asian Screen Cultures. We appreciate that the series editors, Dr, Mark Gallagher and Dr. Yiman Wang, have expressed their interests in our book project.
Please send chapter abstracts of 300-500 words and a biographical note to both Dr. Zhaoyu Zhu (zhaoyu.zhu@nottingham.edu.cn) and Dr. Weiting Fan (weiting.fan@kcl.ac.uk) by 31st December 2022. We will notify authors of acceptance by 1 February 2023. The book proposal will be submitted to Bloomsbury by the 1 March 2023. If selected for this publication, the full text of chapters will be due around 31st August 2023. The proposed length of each chapter will be 6000-8000 words.