In his article “The Television Work of Ann Hui”, Shu Kei asserts that “when Hui was first employed by TVP, the station had largely taken over the functions of Cantonese cinema in the fifties and sixties: i.e. to provide mass entertainment” He also reminds us that many young filmmakers who worked in television between 1976-78 — the Golden Age of Hong Kong television — used the industry as a stepping stone to enter the big screen. Collectively they became a force to be reckoned with… to herald the Hong Kong New Wave,’ a phenomenon which many people then considered pregnant with possibilities.”. While Hong Kong film lovers mourn the drowning in commercialism of the hopes generated by the New Wave, it is again to television that Hui turned back to make innovative work. “The Prodigal’s Return” was produced by her “alma mater,” Radio Television Hong Kong. (source: Berénice Reynaud (from Resolutions:Contemporary Video Practices))
Check the interview with the director
The subject of the documentary is Hou Dejian, a renowned singer-songwriter who was born in Taiwan but returned to the Chinese Mainland in order to find his roots. While there, his hugely popular patriotic song “Descendants of the Dragon” made him quite famous, while he also joined the Democracy Movement. At the same time, his statement in an interview after the events at Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989, and following his arrest and detention by Chinese authorities, that he ‘didn’t see anyone get killed’ made him the subject of immense controversy, ultimately leading to his deportation to Taiwan. That the mainlanders ended up seeing him as Taiwanese and the Taiwanese as Chinese did not allow him to find refuge even there, eventually moving to New Zealand.
Ann Hui’s approach to the documentary is quite multifold actually. “The Prodigal’s Return” begins with footage showing his career and music, before interviews with him about the particular events, and activist leaders Zhou Tuo and Liu Xiaobo, who were with him during the June 4 events, shed more light on what happened. That the two essentially say that he was not inaccurate on what he mentioned, emerges as a rather intriguing point.
After this, however, the movie takes a completely different turn, as it features intense dramatizations, showing a version of what happened during the time he was detained with the authorities, with his time appearing much like an interrogation. With the authorities focusing intensely on what he had told before to the international press, the pressure the protagonist felt is palpable, with Hui hinting, but never saying clearly, that maybe his later statement was forced/biased.
As such, she also examines history as an object of study, essentially highlighting how it is a matter of perspective, and that the powers who dominate will always manage to affect it, for their own gain, as much as public opinion.
As even more cinematic elements come to the fore in the 47 minutes of the documentary, the movie also starts resembling an essay/diary film, while its nature as a TV program remains intact, even if it is being deconstructed constantly. In that fashion, the editing, in the way it joins all the various cinematic elements together also emerges as quite intriguing, highlighting the effort at experimentation even more.
As such, even so many years later, and even if the particular piece of history is not exactly renowned in the West, “The Prodigal’s Return” still remains quite interesting, as an experimentation whose results were later implemented in Hui’s filmography, partially at least. Evidently, though, it is a film that, nowadays at least, is mostly addressed to academics and completionists, and not ‘regular viewers’.
