Tracy Choi

Movie director, her documentary I’m Here won the Jury Award at the 2012 Macao International Film and Video Festival and was subsequently invited to various festivals in Asia and Europe. Choi received her MFA degree in Cinema Production from the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts. Her graduation film Sometimes Naive was short-listed in the 2013 Hong Kong Asian Film Festival. The Farming on the Wasteland won the The Jury’s Commendation Award of the 2014 Macao International Film and Video Festival. Her latest production Sisterhood was selected in the competition section at the 1st International Film Festival & Awards‧Macao and won the Macao Audience Choice Award at the festival. In addition, Sisterhood got two nominations at the 36th Hong Kong Film Awards.

How should Macao movie talents develop?

04 2018 | Issue 26

How Macao movie industry develops became the hot topic recent years. But comparing to the whole industry, I concerned more about how Macao movie talents develop. 


However, no matter we are going to discuss Macao industry or Macao movie talents, we should know what Macao movie is first. When talking about what Macao movie is, people are not clear about it, whether in Macao or other regions. To define the term “Macao movie”, we could discuss it from two aspects. One is the filming location and the other is the proportion between movie executive producers and actors. 


Being the Las Vegas of the East and embracing with the world historical and cultural heritage, Macao has so many scenery spots worthy to be filmed and attracts a lot of teams from different places to film here. But whether the movies filmed in Macao could be called as Macao movie? From the 90s, there are more Hong Kong movies choosing Macao as a location for shooting. Just like a back garden, the exotic Macao brings Hong Kong audiences infinite imagination. In the last ten years, more and more people from different regions went to film in Macao. And the frequency was gradually increased. From the Hollywood movies, Korean movies to mainland China movies, they all came to Macao to capture different shots. But in these films, Macao is only a disembodied stage, which is far from the real Macao. Macao was like a film set with casinos, churches, temples and narrow lanes in these movies. There is no denying that although these images of Macao were not real, that is a good way to let people from other regions to see Macao. But we would not classify these movies as Macao movie. On the contrary, if a movie is never filmed in Macao, but the story is about a Macao people fighting in a strange place to survive and most of the executive producers are Macao people, could we call this film a Macao movie? 


If the filming location could not define a movie as Macao movie, then, what kind of story content, how many movie executive producers and actors involved could be called Macao movie? If all Macao people participate in a movie, but the production detaches from the reality and has nothing to do with the real Macao, could we call this film a Macao movie? Or if a movie is close to the real Macao, but the Macao people participated in are rare, how could we define it? Or the Macao executive producers make a film outside Macao, which is unrelated to Macao, is it has the composition of Macao movie? If the proportion between movie executive producers and actors could not be determined, as well as the filming location, when we supporting the Macao film, what exactly we should support for? 


Because of the reasons mentioned above, I personally think that there are a lot of discussions toward Macao movie. But the only thing that we could not deny is that if more and more producers and actors who know about Macao to make film, we could be more likely to produce Macao movie. Thus, I think how to let Macao movie talents to develop is a more important task. If we even don’t have movie talents, how could we talk about industry? 


Referring to Macao local movie talents, predecessors have cultivated silently from the 90s. And recent years, there are more and more talents devoted to film creation. No matter those who develop in local or those who return from abroad, they all try hard to make their own movies. Movie production is definitely a skill that needs practice. Compared to other skills, like painting, we could draw ten sketches or even a hundred, but making movies could not like this. We could surely say that watching movie is way of learning skill. But the main part of making movies depends on the execution in field. If creation is constrained by execution, that would be regretful. How could the movies talents in different departments and actors practice their own skills? If the local productions are not enough, whether the movie from other places but filming in Macao could involves local staffs working in front of and behind the camera to give them practice opportunities besides working. More importantly, they could learn from the out-of-town movie production teams. 


Concerning the above situation, the cultivation of Macao movie talents should strengthen from different aspects to facilitate the possibility of the development of Macao movie.