The camera is filming and the young boy riding a bicycle is having trouble finding his balance. We’re at the back of Grand Lapa Hotel, in Macau, and filmmaker Clara Law is running around, asking everyone passing by to get off the way, so the shooting can continue. This is going to be one of the scenes of Drifting Petals, Law’s new project, an essay-film.
Born in Macau in 1957, Law finally came back to the place where she lived as a child, and memories just kept coming. Still a child, Clara Law moved to Hong Kong, with her family making that move after the 1,2,3 incidents in Macau.
In our neighbor city, she grew up and studied English Literature. In 1985, Clara Law graduated from the National Film and Television School in England and won the Silver Plaque Award at the Chicago Film Festival for her graduation film, They Say the Moon is Fuller Here. She then returned to work at Radio Television Hong Kong, as an assistant producer and director.
Law’s first feature film was The Other Half and the Other Half (1988), written by the man who would become her partner in life and film until nowadays – Eddie Fong.
Law’s second film, The Reincarnation of Golden Lotus (1989), retells the famous Chinese classic novel, The Golden Lotus. After that, she did Farewell China, starring Tony Leung Ka Fai and Maggie Cheung Man Yuk. The film won the Special Jury Award at the Torino Film Festival in 1990.
In 1992, Law explored in Autumn Moon the hopes and fears of a young Japanese man and a Chinese schoolgirl who bump into each other in Hong Kong. The film won the Golden Leopard Award at the Locarno Film Festival in 1992.
For her next feature, Law adapted a novella by Lilian Lee into Temptation of a Monk, starring Joan Chen and Wu Hsing Kuo. This time, the film was selected for competition at the Venice Film Festival in 1993.
In 1994, Law immigrated to Australia with Eddie Fong. Floating Life was their first feature film made after that and it follows a Chinese family that falls apart after moving from Hong Kong to Australia. It won the Silver Leopard Award at the Locarno Film Festival in 1996.
The Goddess of 1967 was completed in 2000. It was in competition at the Venice Film Festival, where Rose Byrne won the Best Actress Award.
In 2004, Law directed her first documentary on digital video, Letters To Ali. Made in response to the dire situation of asylum seekers in Australia, the documentary was a self-funded non-profit film. It tells the story of a young Afghan boy seeking asylum in Australia and was selected for competition in Venice too.
Like a Dream (2009) marked Law’s return to Asia and it’s a contemporary love story.
Now, and after a few more projects, Law is back to a very personal register, with Drifting Petals, a film being done with little resources and much love fore pure cinema.
Around 50 years have passed since you left Macau, and also since the 1,2,3 events. These two facts are in a way related and we'd like to hear from you if this special anniversary of that incident was also one of the reasons why you've decided to come back to Macau to film.
Clara Law – No, not really. Not for that reason, but I think it is part of history and we, as Chinese, cannot ignore the fact that we are in the process of trying to find democracy. Since hundreds of years ago we've been trying to find how to live in a modern world, what our culture means in this western culture, and I don't think we've found it yet.
You still have very vivid memories from those times when you were living in Macau and the 1,2,3 event?
Yes, strangely is all very clear in my mind. The event itself, I don't know much because we were shut in our house, we weren't allowed out, my mum was very worried at that time and we lived in quite a big house. All I can remember is mum looking out from the window into the streets, feeling very worried and scared about what was going to happen. And then we left, we traveled to Hong Kong. I can't remember the exact date, but I think it was early January 1967.
All these years later, you’re back. It’s the first time you’re shooting in Macau. How do you perceive this city?
It's very different from my past. When the first casino, Lisboa, was being built, the town was very quiet and in a way like a village. My childhood memories of it are of a very quiet and peaceful place. Now I don't think I can breathe here. Going out into the city, people are crowding onto you. It's unreal. Yesterday we went to Cotai to shoot the casinos, up on the hill, you can see the whole place. But I think I'm not here long enough to have an in depth understanding of it. Just by being here for a few days, I felt kind of overwhelmed.
Is there anything in Macau that makes you feel at home, or do you totally feel you are a visitor?
I guess there is something here that makes Macau special. You have to look for it. It is not on the surface. The mixture of Portuguese is strange, which makes me feel it's part of me. It is not about the Portuguese culture, there is something that makes me feel that I have a connection to this place. It's intangible. I think your past is part of you and grows in you. The older you grow, the more your past actually comes back to you.
If I wasn’t born in Macau, then my feelings would be different. But I was born here, and I have childhood memories of here. You can't replace your experiences. So the experience itself is growing in you. It's like water, it blends into your blood and so you can't deny it. (…) But I think it is just the whole blending that makes me feel that I'm not totally Chinese, not totally Macanese, not totally HongKongese, and not totally Aussie.
Have you been feeling emotional here in a way that surprises you?
The strange thing is that when a friend of mine took me to have an overview of the city, all the places that she took me too, I could remember. That I found very strange. The places that still remain, I have recollections of them. And that shocked me because it didn't come up in my memories before. Of course the house we lived in is gone. But it is in my memory, it is in my dreams, I dreamt of it a lot. How I was running back and forth on the streets. There was a little shop, I can still remember, so when I went to that street it felt vey familiar. That is still a part of me. It's hard to explain and it's so fresh. I will be able to name it, to label it after I go back to Melbourne. Just sit down, recollect and reflect, and maybe I will feel a bit different.
You’ve labeled this new project as an essay film. You want to explore things such as the passage of time. In which way and what else are you going to explore in this film?
This film is not totally fiction and this is something that Eddie and I have been wanting to experiment with. In The Goddess of 1967 we did something that is what we call the ‘montage’, not in the way people talk about montage, but by juxtaposing different elements, using different scenes, so there’s some sort of chemistry, a kind of third element that comes out of it.
I feel you are not constrained by what you see in a drama. You are taken out totally from the story and become an observer or a commentator. You look at the film as an outsider. We deliberately did that because we didn't wanted to exploit the sentiment of the audience, we wanted them to be able to be insiders and outsiders. Only by doing so are they able to have a bigger view, a much more expanded view of life or existence.
It's like writing book. Writing a book you just need pen and paper. Nowadays you use a computer. For paintings you just need color. But in film there is a lot to organize. People, money, big machines. But nowadays you can actually use a small camera. The devices are so good that you don't need to set up lighting and other things. I'm a very ‘image person’, I can't do with bad images. I love having beautiful images, I think we can do it with very limited equipment (…).
This time we knew it was an experiment so we tried to do what we set out to do. When we wrote the script we put all these into consideration. First of all, we knew that if we did day scenes in Asia, in Hong Kong or Macau, it would look awful because most of the time there was not enough sunlight. It is polluted, maybe. So we shot at night. We knew it would look good with the street lights.
And we knew we wouldn't be able to do big scenes and have 50 actors. That's not possible. So most of the times it would be 2 or 3 actors. But it didn't mean that it would be a small story. It could still have a big scope, a vision that was more than a story of one person. It could still have a lot of history and culture. So we put in historical facts and our own comments like a documentary, a fiction. There is history, imagination that we could use. It becomes a mixture of all the things. It's hard to say it's just a fiction film, rather we call it an essay film.
How would you summarize it if asked what it is about?
This film is about the human spirit, the looking for beauty, finding a home. I’m looking for where we stand in the modern world, which I think is my subject forever. And this is the most frustrating thing, because a lot of times when I have taken a film to festivals, they would say the film is about an issue, but my films are not just about an issue. I found that very frustrating because art is not just about issues. It is about existence, your relationship with the world. The philosophy, the art, the culture, all of these things I don't find them anymore… Maybe we are not able to achieve that here, but at least we are trying.
You are doing this film and you don’t want it to be like the ones you did before, or like what everyone in general is doing around the world. You mentioned before that some years ago you also stopped going to film festivals, and stopped watching cinema. Why was that?
Because it was very frustrating. When I watch a really good film, I want to be moved. I want to feel transcended. I want to feel I'm pushed to appreciate, admire and be touched by the human spirit. What we can do, what we can achieve. I don't find this in the cinema nowadays. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe I haven't seen enough films, but the things that I have watched make me want to just stop watching.
For a number of years, you worked with some of the most famous actors in Hong Kong, such as Maggie Cheung and Tony Leong. You were all much younger at that time. Was there anyone amongst them that really amazed you by their talent?
I think that happened all the time. Most of the time, it’s discovering new talent. I like to discover new talent. So say when I was in China, there was a young girl, I think she was 16 or 17 at that time. And she was playing the young girl in the film. I like to find the rawness in them, not yet polluted. If they became too much about mimicking or copying how to act, then I lost interest. So I like them to be original.
And of course they are actors, I like it when they surprise me, when they make me feel ‘ok, I’m inspired’ – there are lots of them. Maggie is one of them. I like them to be open.
If they are closed, too protective of themselves, if they are thinking of their own image, then I can’t work with them, really. I’d like to discover the part of them that hasn’t been discovered. I don't want to see the same old Tony or same old Maggie. I want to see the one that hasn’t been found yet. That face of hers or his that hasn’t been found yet. And then use that potential up to their limit.
I want them to be a white piece of paper that I can color and shape and push them to find the own potential so that when they see themselves, they see, ‘oh, this is what I can do’. I want them to be able to take up challenges.
You chose to have a challenging life in cinema, that is part of what you are doing now. I think one of the other challenges is that you have been doing all this side by side with someone else, your partner, Eddie XXXX. How important has been this relationship been for your work and your life?
Very important. I think first and foremost is that we have the same vision. I think the way we look at the world, I think we feel the same. We love the same kind of films. I meant it just happens, when we discuss the films, when we were just in the first stage of our dating, we found we liked the same things. I think that he is my soul mate. But this doesn’t mean that it’s easy.
