You don’t have to believe in ghosts to admit that there’s a kind of mystical aura in Macau, an occult, superstitious side to the city, hidden deep within the small old town alleys and narrow streets. ‘Into the Void’, a documentary by Ruka Borges and António Caetano Faria and the winner of this year’s Macau Indies competition, tries to unveil that part of Macau.
‘Into the Void’ stars Emily Siu, at the time of the shooting a journalist at Macau TV channel TDM. The camera follows the reporter on her daily routines and also during the investigations into supernatural stories in Macau that she decides to embark on. “Ruka and I used to work together in TDM. He left, but we stayed friends, and he knows I have a thing for ghosts and supernatural stuff, because I always like to dress up as a zombie or pretend I’m a ghost, or do very creepy things everywhere I go. Also, I watch very creepy films”, says Emily Siu, explaining how she ended up participating in this project. “Ruka also knows I am a pretty intense reporter, so he thought I’d be perfect for this documentary.”
Directors Borges and Faria show the journalist’s perseverance, as she goes from one person to another, asking for strange stories about ghosts and spirits. Even if we call it a documentary, or a docu-drama, Ruka Borges admits that “there’s no doubt that fiction is shaping cinema nowadays” and also influenced ‘Into the Void’. Films like ‘I’m Still Here’, about actor Joaquin Phoenix, are starting use re-enactments of real life events as a technique to illustrate the story they want to tell. Borges says they tried to “symbolise Emily’s mood by using strange camera angles, shadows and colors, and also by filming from a voyeuristic perspective, giving the idea that she is constantly being observed”.
Throughout the documentary, Emily keeps on interviewing different people. “We were always faithful to the interviewees’ statements,” Borges assures. “Without them and their courage to tell their stories, we would never have made it”.
But at the same time that Emily is guiding us through the supernatural city, she is also exposing herself to the audience. “It was definitely very weird to see myself, my house, my life being put on the big screen. I was quite nervous about it, so that’s why I didn’t even tell many people or invite many people to the screening”, she says.
Emily’s biggest concern is that people might think she wants to be an actress.
“Because I absolutely do not want to become an actress, nor do I have the talent to act.” Now living in Hong Kong, the reporter confesses that ‘Into the Void’ makes her miss Macau.
“I miss my house and my life in Macau after watching the film. They made my house look a lot more charming than it really is! As for the way I presented myself, that’s pretty much who I am, especially when I go out and about and talk to random people, and force ghost stories out of them – that’s pretty much my work attitude as well. I’m super persistent and super thick skinned. I think that’s why they wanted me for the job. If I wasn’t thick skinned enough, I would not have gotten any stories.” Indeed finding supernatural stories was no easy challenge for Emily.
“We couldn’t find a lot of people because people in Macau are so reluctant to talk in general, and when you ask them about ghosts and supernatural things, things they are not familiar with and they are scared to talk about, it’s almost like a taboo subject,” she notes.
Ruka Borges adds that time and language constraints were also hard to deal with, but he doesn’t think the film lacks substance.
“This is only an exploratory documentary and one of the first to approach this topic in Macau. Our goal wasn’t to prove the existence or non-existence of spirits, but to tell some stories of people who have had supernatural experiences.”
Overall, it wasn’t easy to collect the stories audiences can now watch in ‘Into the Void’. “I got yelled at big time by random people I had never met and they all thought I was crazy. I think in Macau it’s rare for a person to poke around asking questions that people don’t want to answer. In a sense it was fun, but also frustrating”, says Emily.
Apart from the difficulty of getting people to talk, there was another major obstacle from Emily’s perspective: she was genuinely frightened about shooting ‘Into the Void’ and disrespecting the spirits.
“I was so scared I would offend the spirits (if they are there, I always think it’s better to believe than doubt completely), so secretly, deep down I would say to them in my heart ‘sorry to bother you guys, we are just working here, I don’t mean to offend you guys or disturb you guys, just trying to get a story here, please don’t be angry with me’”.
Emily confesses she has a Buddhist bracelet her mother gave her. She wore it everyday throughout the film’s shooting and refused to take it off.
“My mum found out I did this film after it won the award, and she told me that if I had told her beforehand that I was going to participate in this project, she would have never permitted me to do it, because she’s scared I will be possessed or bump into some spirits, or offend some of them and cause some crazy consequences for myself – like they might follow me home. So I kept it a secret from her the whole time – until the premiere.” Fortunately everything seems to have gone well for both the directors and reporter, but the spirits are still out there. When we ask Ruka Borges if he thinks Macau is still a mystical place, the answer is prompt: “I think that in this ‘new’ Macau, more than ever, you can sense the belief and dependency on mystical and occult forces that will bring fortune to people.”
With ‘Into the Void’, co-director António Caetano Faria became the first to win the Macau Indies Jury Award twice, after winning the 2011 prize for ‘Time Travel,’ co-directed with Carolina Rodrigues. Faria and Borges hope to screen the film again in Macau and possibly in other cities too.
Fiction and animation films awarded by the festival
This was the first time the Macau Indies and Macau International Film and Video Festival presented short-fiction and animation films, produced with the support of the Macau Cultural Centre. Up until last year, financial support was only provided to documentaries. The ‘Commendation Award for Short Movie’ was given to ‘But Myself’ by Ao leong Weng Fong. ‘Macao Dealer’ by Sam Kin Hang received the ‘Commendation Award for Animation’. ‘Laps’ by Ho Fei won the ‘Commendation Award for Feature Film’. The jury decided to encourage another production ‘A Friend of Mine’ by Tracy Choi Ian Sin, awarding it a ‘Special Mention’. Tracy Choi won the Jury Award last year, with her documentary ‘I’m Here’.
This year’s jury was composed of three film professionals based in Asia: Taiwanese director Lee Daw-Ming, a full-time associate professor from the Taipei University of Arts; Hong Kong director Derek Kwok; and experimental filmmaker and video artist Cao Kai from Mainland China.
