The Networked Storyteller and Her Digital Tale: Film Festivals and Ann Hui’s 'My Way'

Abstract

In cooperation with China’s Youku online channel, the Hong Kong International Film Festival Society commissioned Ann Hui to make a short film, My Way, to be part of an omnibus production, Beautiful 2012. In order to be considered for this commission, Hui needed to be acknowledged at international film festivals and be a recognized auteur known in the Asian region and beyond. Without Hui’s festival credentials and the reputation of the other directors in the curated production, the collected shorts would have little appeal to other programmers and distributors. Although she has famously resisted the label of “film auteur” in the past, Ann Hui undoubtedly stands as the most celebrated female director based in Hong Kong active before and after the establishment of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) in 1997.Given the length of her career as well as the impressive critical and scholarly attention her work has garnered, Hui serves as an exemplary case study of how film festivals play a vital role in the career of a Hong Kong female fiction film director. In the case of My Way, the festival circuit permits a specific type of production and digital distribution that enables Hui to craft a network narrative, which places the transition of its protagonist from male to female within a broader community connected through a shared gender identity. By analyzing Ann Hui’s presence at the festivals in Venice and Hong Kong, as well as the link between her festival exposure and her Internet success, My Way offers insight into the circuitous paths women filmmakers follow in order to tell their stories on transnational screens.