Praise for Bauhinia:

"In the aftermath of September 11th, film student Bauhinia (Jun Li) attempts to edit her thesis project on female infanticide brought about by China's singular child policy in a room overlooking the wreckage left by the fallen Twin Towers. Faced with an unexpected pregnancy, the Hong Kong expatriate must choose between bringing a child into a world obsessed with its own destruction and aborting a possible female life.

Director Evans Chan melts the diegetic and real world boundaries to create a space that haunts not only its characters but the audience as well. In "Bauhinia," he captures a side of post 9/11 New York unfiltered by pop media thus consequently more truthful to the human condition"

--- Christopher Claxton, Hawaii International Film Festival

 

“The peculiarity of the Bauhinia plant -- Hong Kong's emblematic flower -- is that it doesn't reproduce itself through the common process of cross-pollination but rather by putting down new roots from its branches. Ever alert to resonant metaphors, Evans Chan tells the tale of a Hong Kong girl named Bauhinia who is trying to root herself in New York and finds herself grappling with the issues of reproduction, from enforced abortions and sterilisations in China to an unwanted pregnancy closer to home. Meanwhile, this being the end of 2001, her adopted home is facing traumas of its own - the aftermath of the September 11 attacks of the World Trade Centre. As usual, Chan achieves a seamless blend of fact and fiction in Bauhinia to produce innovative, essayistic cinema: a type of film- making in which ideas and emotions cross-pollinate each other.”

--- Tony Rayns (columnist, Sight & Sound)

 

“A love story about an expatriate Hong Kong Chinese, Bauhinia is a distinquished short feature set in post-September 11 New York where the female protagonist, a film student, works in an editing room that perches above the World Trade Center ruins...Evans Chan has evoked New York of that particular moment with cogent immediacy, as he spins a subtly nuanced yarn about a tortuous romance. If one finds the female protagonist somewhat introspective and self-obsessed, the male protagonist, seemingly simple-minded, is a fun-filled, tenderly loving character.”

--- Shek Kei (Ming Pao, April 14, 2002)



OTHER LINKS:

http://www.filmint.nu/netonly/eng/warandimages.htm

(“War and Images: 9/11/01, Susan Sontag, Jean Baudrillard, and Paul Virilio,” an essay by Evans Chan)

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《紫荊》評論摘錄:

《紫荊》是港人在異鄉的愛情故事。這劇情短片很特別,完全發生於九一一後的紐約曼哈頓,留學唸電影的香港女主角的剪片室剛巧面對世貿中心廢墟……陳耀成拍出紐約實感﹐寫情細緻曲折,女主角有點林黛玉脾性,多愁善感和自我中心,反而頭腦簡單的男友比較好玩,又是難得的有情郎。

石琪 (二OO二年四月十四日「明報」)

 

香港市花洋紫荊的特色是靠人工拆枝生根,而不是花粉「受孕」而「生育」繁殖。對充滿弦外之音的隱喻特別敏感的陳耀成塑造了一個洋名為「紫荊」的香港女子。她試圖在紐約落地生根,卻受困於不同的生育問題──從中國一胎政策導致的強迫墮胎及絕育底痛史,到她自己意外受孕的處境,而故事背景為二OO一年底,紫菿寓居的都市正面臨九一一恐怖襲擊後遺症的多事之秋。陳耀成一以貫之地把實事與虛構天衣無縫地揉合,拍製出他充滿創意、滲以論述的電影。這電影世界內,理會與感情互傳花粉,開枝散葉。

東尼‧雷恩斯 (「視與聽」專欄作家)

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