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Writer/Director Evans Chan
Short Bio:
Born in China and raised in Macao and Hong Kong, Evans Yiu Shing Chan陳耀成
(Screenwriter/Director/Editor) is a cultural critic, playwright, and filmmaker,
whose filmmography includes three narrative features, To
Liv(e) 浮世戀曲 (1992), Crossings錯愛
(1995), The
Map of Sex and Love情色地圖 (2001); a short DV feature Bauhinia紫荊
(2002); and two documentaries about China's decolonization: Journey
to Beijing 北征(1998) and Adeus Macau澳門二千
(2000). Chan has written five books, including two collections of essays,
The Last of the Chinese 最後的中國人
and From the New Wave to the Postmodern從新浪潮到後現代.
His recent writings in English on Hong Kong cinema and his interview with
Susan Sontag appear in the online journal Postmodern Culture. Susan Sontag:
Selected Writings 蘇珊‧桑塔格文選,
edited and translated by Chan, was selected as one of the 10 best non-fiction
books by Taiwan's United Daily in 2002. Chan has also written a play that
was produced Off Broadway in New York: The
Naked Earth赤地之戀, based on an Eileen Chang
novel, was presented at the Bank Street Theatre in 2000. The
Life and Times of Wu Zhong Xian 吳仲賢的故事, previously adapted by Chan,
with Mok Chiu Yu莫昭如, into English for a staging at New York's Theatre
for the New City in 1998, is his most recent DV feature. In 1991, Chan
founded his Riverdrive Productions Co逾流製作社有限公司. (Co-producer), with the
backing of Willy Tsao 曹誠 淵 (Co-producer). Other than producing Chan's
own independent films, Riverdrive line-produced Peter Greenaway's The
Pillow Book in 1997. Chan lives somewhere between
Hong Kong and New York.
Long Bio:
Born in China and raised in Macao and Hong
Kong, Evans Yiu Shing Chan陳耀成 (Screenwriter/Director/Editor) is a cultural
critic, playwright, and filmmaker, whose filmography includes four narrative
features, To
Liv(e) 浮世戀曲 (1992), Crossings錯愛
(1995), The
Map of Sex and Love情色地圖(2001); and Bauhinia紫荊
(2002). His Journey
to Beijing 北征(1998), a '99 Berlin
Film Festival "Forum" selection and a Best Documentary nominee
at the '98 Hawaii Film Festival, is "a remarkable feature-length
documentary [that] offers the all-round best account of the issues surrounding
the hand-over of Hong Kong to China on 1 July 1997." (Sight &
Sound July, 1998) Chan's third narrative feature,
The
Map of Sex and Love, was hailed as "a rare film from Hong Kong,
wise and profound" by the 2001 Hong Kong International Film Festival.
Chan is "the most intellectual
of the current crop of Hong Kong directors," wrote Barry Long in
Hong Kong Babylon (1997, Faber & Faber). Gina Marchetti, author of
Romance & the "Yellow Peril," (1993, University of California
Press) describes Chan's films as addressing "issues that find only
a marginal voice in the mainstream media of HK and the US...[creating
a new type of] a transnational, transcultural discourse."*
To
Liv(e) 浮世戀曲** -- Hailed
by The Hollywood Reporter as "filled with the kind of style, performances
and ambition one might expect from a critic turned filmmaker, and for
which no apologies need be made" -- won the Best Actress Award at
the Portugal Sintra Festival, the Special Jury Prize at the Singapore
Film Festival, and the Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress awards
at the Taiwan Golden Horse Film Festival.
Crossings錯愛 -- praised by the
magazine Don Quichotte, at its North American premiere at the Montreal
Film Festival in September 1994, as "an accomplished representation
of the passage from one culture to another, the intermingling of races
and the foretelling of a real-life story before its time -- 1997."
Video Watchdog called the film "a unique merging of HK cinema and
New York independent film...a worthy follow-up to Chan's justly celebrated
debut."
Chan formed his own production company in 1990,
which, other than producing his own works, has line-produced Peter Greenaway's
The Pillow Book in the former British colony.
The
Naked Earth赤地之戀, Chan's
play based on an Eileen Chang novel about China's early years under Communist
rule, had an Off-Broadway run at the Bank Street theatre in 2000 and was
featured by the PBS documentary "Harmony & Peace: Asian Americans
in New York." Chan's adaptation of The
Life & Times of Ng Chung Yin吳仲賢的故事 -- a "fascinating
account" (Village Voice) of a Hong Kong radical -- was staged at
the Theatre for the New City in 1998. As a program consultant to New York's
Yangtze Repertory Theatre of America, Chan has presented Margaret Leng
Tan, "diva of the avant-garde" (The New Yorker) and vocal artist/composer
Sola Liu in concerts, as well as Between Life and
Death, the first full American production, in 1997, of a play by
Gao Xinjiang, the 2000 Nobel Prize-winner.
Chan, a former advisor to the Hong Kong International
Film Festival, is also known as a veteran cultural critic. Chan's publications
include Dream Tenants, a collection of essays
and stories; The Last of The Chinese最後的中國人,
named the Best Book of Criticism by the '99 Hong Kong Literary Biannual
Awards; and From the New Wave to the Postmodern,
a collection of film essays published by the Hong Kong Film Critics Society.
His writings in English appear in Postmodern Culture, which has published
"Postmodernism & Hong Kong Cinema"*** and "Against
Postmodernism, etc. -- A Conversation with Susan Sontag,"**** as
well as in Film International, which published "War and Images: 9/11,
Baudrillard, Sontag and Virilio" in its September 2003 (#5) issue.*****
Chan's video documentaries include The
Floating Light (1995) -- a survey of Hong Kong's cinematic art
by interviewing noted cinematographers (Peter Pao, Chris Doyle) as well
as production designers (William Chang, Pan Lai) -- and Adeus
Macau, a follow-up to Journey
to Beijing, which examines a decolonized China through the 1999 Sino-Portuguese
handover of Macau. Adeus was premiered in
Portugal at the OvarVideo 2001 festival. He is the dramaturg of Sexing
Three Millennia, a City Contemporary Dance Company production presented
at the 1998 Hong Kong Asian Arts Festival, which toured Singapore and
Shanghai. Evans Chan lives somewhere between New York and Hong Kong.
*http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/pmc/v008/8.2marchetti.html
** Evans Chan's To Liv(e): Screenplay & Essays, a critical bilingual
edition (edited by Tak-wai Wong), was published by the University of Hong
Kong Press in 1996. [http://www.hkupress.org/asp/bookinfo.asp?PD_NUM=9627495077]
***http://www.iath.virginia.edu/pmc/text-only/issue.500/10.3chan.txt
**** http://www.iath.virginia.edu/pmc/text-only/issue.901/12.1chan.txt
*****www.filmint.nu
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