The blinding sun reflects from the lotus-shaped Grand Lisboa hotel, a paradoxical contemporary backdrop for our walking tour through the cobbled streets of ancient, historic Macao, from The Ruins of St. Paul’s church and Na Tcha Temple to Senado Square. Meanwhile, our friendly tour guide, Elsa Ruth Tang, is keen on getting us up to date with the current facts and figures. She rattless off the numbers: 30 square kilometre area; 650,000 people and 200,000 vehicles; 40,000 tourists a day; six millionaires, 40 casinos, but only three hospitals; 18 billion MOP (Macanese pataca) a month turnover from the casinos; an average income of 12,000 MoP a month and only two per cent unemployment. She and then fills you in about Stanley Ho, founding father of the gambling industry, and how people from China come over in hoards to Macao to buy original brands and labels (infested as they are with counterfeits) and to gamble (which is illegal in the mainland).
It is indeed difficult then to see Macao as distinct from its uber kitschy casinos that come with humungous hotels and opulent, high-end malls attached. And you only expect to see more of the glitz in the darkness of the film theatres, in the local and regional films playing in the first edition of the International Film Festival and Awards Macao (IFFAM). Surprisingly, you don’t. In reality, a casino awaits you at every turn; in the films you see there are no ubiquitous slot machines on view.
Take the festival favourite, Sisterhood, by Macao’s own Tracy Choi. An ode to sorority, as the title explains, the film begins in the old, pre-China Macao and ends in the shiny place that it is today. But you don’t see the exteriors, the imposing synthetic landscape. It is an intimate story of friendship between Seiya and Kay, how they bring up a baby together and how they split on the eve of Macao’s handover in 1999 (from Portugal to China) as Seiya moves to Taiwan with her husband. A trifle soppy, with a plot propelled by happenstance, it nonetheless engages.
Another competition entry, Hong Kong filmmaker Fruit Chan’s Shining Moment, about a dance instructor and a group of kids preparing to take part in a Latin dance competition, reminded me instantly of our very own 1972 film, Gulzar’s Parichay; full of the “aw” factor and in-your-face cute appeal.
Similarly, Yonfan’s 1986 Mandarin classic, Immortal Story, felt like Pakeezah (Kamal Amrohi, 1972) retold: the overarching emotions, music, love, longing, fate, separation and tragedy, all intact. The Indian filmmaker and jury president of the festival, Shekhar Kapur, seemed to share the opinion about our cinemas. He wrote in a festival note:
“…what we are now experiencing is the renaissance of culture inspired by Asian communities […] Indian story-telling has so much in common with the Chinese forms of story-telling. Hopefully these new forms of storytelling will bring the world to a better understanding of itself.”
However, the festival wasn’t just confined to films from the Asian region. For a first-timer, the line-up was pretty impressive, with many contemporary biggies like Fatih Akin’s Goodbye Berlin, Pablo Larrain’s Neruda and Jackie (with Natalie Portman as an elegant and enigmatic portrait of grief as the wife of the slain U.S. President John F. Kennedy), Kenneth Lonergan’s Manchester By The Sea and Oliver Assayas’s Personal Shopper. One of the competition entries, Ben Wheatley’s Free Fire, with Martin Scorsese as executive producer, is set in the 70s and is confined to just one space: a warehouse. Gangs clash, gun are fired and bullets, blood and gore roll on. Violence escalates by the minute and you wonder if you would be able to last longer than the film. And you do; as the cat-and-mouse game turns into a powerful struggle for survival.
What could have been managed better in the festival is the logistics and scheduling. With films spread across various venues in the Macao peninsula and Taipa island, it got difficult to run around catching most of them.
Raj Kapoor classic Awaara (1951) played without Chinese subtitles, forcing many curious young viewers to leave within 15 minutes. Ironically, it was part of an extremely well-curated section at the festival where the intent was to introduce young viewers and filmmakers to the cinematic gems of yore. Called ‘Crossfire’, it had 12 of East Asia’s top filmmakers select a film (from outside of East Asia and the USA) that inspired their work. Awaara was selected by director Ning Hao. John Woo picked Jacques Demy’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964), Takeshi Miike opted for Sergio Corbucci’s The Great Silence (1968), Park Chan-Wook’s choice was Nicholas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now (1973) and Kiyoshi Kurosawa went for Georges Franju’s Eyes Without A Face (1960).
Most films didn’t have a second public screening and, often, interesting films ended up clashing with each other. So the Indian competition entry, Shanker Raman’s Gurgaon (more about it in another article), a strong statement on the cultural flashpoints and deep-rooted male entitlement in the national capital region, played at the same time as the Japanese big gun, Takeshi Miike’s latest, The Mole Song: Hong Kong Capriccio. Raman himself, however, was rather pleased to have Gurgaon play in Macao. Any similarities in the two places? Pat came the answer: lavish real estate all around, the world of builders that this debut feature is also located in.
IFFAM may have been off to a fair start. But what does the future hold for the festival? With Busan and Hong Kong boasting of the big festivals in the region, and Shanghai and Beijing struggling to make their presence felt, will cinema thrive independently in the midst of tourism, gambling and shopping?
Watch this space.
