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| acknowledgements : curator's note : films : location : schedule : ama home | |
Map of Sex and Love, The (Qinse Ditu)(China/Hong Kong 2001, 35mm, 130 min.) Director: Evans Chan Director's BiographyEvans Yiu Shing Chan grew up in Macau and Hong Kong before moving to New York in 1984. He is a critic, dramatist, and award-winning director of two narrative features: To Live (1991) and Crossings (1994). His recent film, A Journey to Beijing (1998), a 1999 Berlin Film Festival "Forum" selection and a Best Documentary nominee at the 1998 Hawaii Film Festival, is a "remarkable feature-length documentary (that) offers the all-around best account of the issues surrounding the hand-over of Hong Kong to China on 1 July 1997" (Sight & Sound, July, 1998). 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) transnational, transcultural discourse." Director's Note"There are two opposing and equally fantastical views of narrative art -- as a direct transcription of the artist's life experiences, or as a total invention of the imagination. Understandably, most narrative artists work between these two poles, ranging from Reinaldo Arenas's trenchant memoir, Before Night Falls, to Italo Calvino's freewheeling Cosmicomics. The Map of Sex and Lovehas its origins in some real stories I've heard in Hong Kong over the years: a gay high-school student advised by his counselor to wear a rubber band as a corrective cure; a young woman's close brush with insanity in Belgrade. The Nazi Gold chapter in The Map, however, stems directly from my personal experience. My father was a gold welder in Macau back in the 60's. Hence the allegations of possible Nazi gold laundering in the former Portuguese colony hit me as a shocking revelation in New York, where I've lived part time since I went to study at the New School for Social Research (now New School University) in the mid-80's. I picked New York and the New School out of a vague search for the already departed presence of Hannah Arendt, whose writings -- a moving endeavour to think through "The Human Condition" (the title of one of her books) by way, and in spite, of the Holocaust -- had burned into my consciousness as a confused college student in Hong Kong. While these anecdotes come from real life, the landscape in which they are portrayed is entirely imaginary. For some time, Hong Kong's outlying islands have been the dwelling places of the Bohemian fringe. I was struck by the image of a girl, who looked lost and forlorn, in an artisan shop in Lamma. Somehow I felt she should run into a gay neighbour. I also felt that the third protagonist, the filmmaker, would meet them. At first, I thought of a heterosexual romance between the girl and the filmmaker. Eventually, I turned the filmmaker into a gay character, because homosexuals, as much as Jews, were also victims of the Third Reich. In an earlier stage, the film was titled Three Secrets, referring to secrets personal -- personally hurtful as experienced by the girl and the gay dancer - as well as secrets public and historical, like the Nazi Gold allegations in Macau. But the film is undoubtedly about sex(uality) and love. Linking them to the map, I hope, will suggest the uncertainties -- hence pain, exhilaration, and the unquenchable need for orientation -- of one's personal and historical existence." Critic's Corner"An overwhelming experience.... The talented Cherie Ho, the female lead, has an extraordinary way of handling all the complex emotions. Chan, a veteran independent filmmaker, captured the newly adapted DV (digital video) style... and the end result is more interesting than conventional 35mm." "The Map of Sex and Love is an essay disguised as a narrative, or maybe vice versa. Either way, it offers a seductively discursive experience as it negotiates the spaces between desire and inhibition, between the body and the always troublesome mind, between cruising and map-making. A trio of charming performances consolidates its appeal." "The Map of Sex and Love is an unusual multi-genre Hong Kong film that mixes stories of homosexual and heterosexual love, and ruminations on a changing [post-handover] Hong Kong and Macau...personal yet worldly...savory and variegated...a free-wheeling and artfully constructed whole made up of intriguingly diverse elements...with plenty of colorful details and inspired touches...The female character turns the film into a transcendent homosexual tale. Cherie Ho is excellent, her monologue...in "Belgrade", probably the best segment...is extraordinary..."Nazi Gold" evokes not only a mysterious [WWII] episode but also a tragic-comic father-son relationship, with the son's memories of his dead mother movingly understated ..."Rubber Band" offers surprising, unique drama...Evans Chan's most distinctive and accomplished work to date...." "Perhaps the meaning of Evans Chan's movie is really The Map of Sex and Love -- the paradoxical relations between the sexes are far more important here than sex...During two hours...each of the three main characters is on his/her own journey. They cross borders in real life and in their dreams...Evans Chan's film is not an action film. In certain aspects it is close to the style of Wong Kar-wai. But while the latter moves towards aesthetisizing vague sensual states, Chan looks almost like a documentary filmmaker in spite of the similarity of certain imagery techniques...[The Map] is indicative of what sets the specific tone in modern-day cinema, namely the mood. Here we are talking about blending video and movie images...As for Chan, in his movie he unequivocally points out that video is a way for homosexual minorities, provincials and losers to have "their own" cinema, which needs neither a huge budget nor a big audiences, which always wants to see normative (not dull) aesthetics. Thus Chan's cinema unites minorities and society. In this sense he draws the love lines, which cross the boundaries of the sexes, progress and national identity." Festival Participation List2001 Cinemanila |
| © 2002 Asian Media Access |
Through three interrelated stories - "Rubber Band," "Belgrade," and "Nazi Gold" - Evans Chan explores history past and present, and love gay and straight in