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.

Movies’ social function

10 2019 | Issue35

Even though movies are considered to be the eighth art form, the public generally does not see them as art pieces since they oftentimes involve a large amount of investment and would sometimes lose money.

 

Ever since the birth of movies, they have been regarded as commercial products because even today you still need to pay for a ticket to watch any movie at the theatre. And of course, besides going to the cinema, we now have multiple channels to pay for and watch movies. As commercial products, movies naturally have the incentives to cater to the preference of the audience because of the supply and demand mechanism in the commercial market. But then we have to ask ourselves: what exactly do people want to watch? This question is especially important in this Internet era. We need to really think about what viewers expect from the movies. Human beings naturally long for good stories, which we can see from the myths and legends that had been passed down for generations. Somehow humans desire to constantly hear and see good stories. In this case, movies’ commercial operation is quite simple. Movie makers just need to make films that tell stories that are rare in the market or that are desired by the market. Just take a minute and think about this. Most people dream of a romantic encounter, which is very uncommon in reality. This is why romantic stories are generally very popular among the audience. Essentially, love and romance are the eternal themes of movies.

 

However, movies have very small commercial value in Macao as it is unlikely for moviemakers to profit if they only focus on the local market. The cost of movie production is so much higher than the money movies can make in Macao. This is why movies from Macao have to rely on overseas markets for achieving commercial value. In other words, Macao’s movies are not made only for local viewers, but also the audience from other regions. Only when there are enough anticipated viewers can Macao movies truly make full use of their utility as commercial products. But of course, it is no easy task to do so. The most apparent task for Macao movies to complete is that they need to be as good as other quality films in different regions so as to compete with them in the market. Secondly, often times a movie’s box office performance is heavily influenced by the popularity of the actors and actresses. Macao itself doesn’t have super famous movie stars. What’s worse, it is very expensive to hire famous stars from other places. Even if the production team is able to cover the cost, it is still unsure whether these famous actors and actresses would agree to star in Macao movies. This leads to a vicious cycle in which moviemakers find it hard to enter the field of commercial films.

 

Another aspect of movies that I want to discuss is the cultural value of movies. As I have mentioned at the beginning of the article, movies are not just products. They are also considered as the eighth art form. So should we see them as actual art pieces? First, we need to look at the social functions of movies. Art creation happens for various reasons. It could be self-expression, or it could be about religious expression. There are also arts created for documenting traditional cultures. We could also make arts to break certain social norms and provide society with the opportunity to reassess the ethical standards we have in society. If we only look at preserving traditional cultures, we would discover that literature, music, paintings and photography all have such social function. It is quite often to see art pieces focusing on traditional cultures. As for movies, they are also important actors in preserving and documenting traditional cultures. We record the development and stories of cities through our lenses. Even in drama films, we can have a glimpse of the lifestyle and culture that people from a certain period had. This is why movies have great advantages in documenting traditional cultures. Art forms like literature and pop music make contributions to the organic change of social norms and concepts. In recent years, we have witnessed a number of pop stars making music to voice out for vulnerable groups, raising more awareness on bullying and discrimination. They are making efforts to make society a better place for everyone. Movies have even more apparent impact on the development of social norms. It has become a common practice for Hollywood movies to include characters of different race and sexual orientation. In Korea, movies that focus on sexual harassment even helped motivate the legislature to roll out new laws and regulations. These are examples of how movies are helping to shape society.

 

The question here comes down to how we could balance between generating commercial value and cultural value when making movies. Should we produce a movie with great cultural value even if it does not make money? Or should we only focus on the commercial value and neglect movies’ social functions? These are the questions we need to give more thoughts into.