'I am (not) an Auteur': A Study on Ann Hui's Female Film Authorship as Ethical Subjectivity

Being one of the most renowned and established film directors in Hong Kong, film critics and researchers often show ambivalence in recognizing Ann Hui as an Auteur, which is usually based on the lack a consistent body of themes, techniques and genres observed in Ann Hui's work. To further complicate the recognition of Ann Hui as an Auteur, more specifically a female auteur, are the tensions between anti-essentialism and naive humanism on one hand, and the advent of postmodernism's critique against the Subject on the other. This study sets out to address the marginalization of Ann Hui as a female director in both the film industry and film studies, and seeks to provide theoretical tools for the constitution of agency of a female auteur from the perspective of the Foucauldian thoughts on ethical subjectivity and aesthetics of existence.;With a view of achieving a historical rather than ahistorical, a multiple rather than unified, and both as a constituted as well as constituting subject in light of Foucault's ethical subjectivity, this study challenges the beliefs held by contemporary Auteur theory and feminist auteur theories that film authorship is only located within the repertoire of a film director as signature, or as the reading strategy of the audience. By drawing on the idea of ascesis (askesis) -- a work on oneself which aims at intensifying and transforming one's relation to oneself -- discussions are highlighted in how Ann Hui makes use of film productions as self-practices to reconstitute her own relation with film authorship. This study argues that Ann Hui problematizes the game of truth (jeux de verite) of the hegemonic Auteur that she has been subjugated to, and actively makes herself the subject of an alternative female authorship, with an emphasis on her own personal visions. Through analyzing how this evasive stance further drives Ann Hui's problematization in rethinking, criticizing, challenging or even subverting other games of truth, especially in her ongoing interrogations of the female subject, sexual subject and national identity through the technologies of the self, this study establishes the ways Ann Hui seeks to progress towards the "art of existence" by transforming her relations with these rules of conduct, and making her life as a work of art that carries specific aesthetic values and meets distinctive stylistic criteria.;Keywords: Ann Hui, female auteur, ethical subject, technology of self, art of existence.