As part of this year’s Macao International Film and Video Festival (MIFVF) Macao Indies is featuring a total of 26 local films, animations and documentaries produced in Macau, allowing audiences to explore a wide range of stories of the city. CLOSER speaks to two of the young local directors
Stealing hearts
Among the 26 local productions at this year’s Macao Indies is the 20-minute film Thief directed by Daniel Yip, who is joining the Festival for the second time. His film tells the story of a man working in a printing store in Beijing who falls in love with a pickpocket. It seeks to explore the connection between an act of stealing and a romantic relationship, and shows how a young person struggles on his way to finding love.
After studying in Taiwan and being exposed to different types of films, Daniel started making short films with friends before switching to studying filmmaking formally.
“Normally, I am the kind of person who doesn’t like to talk. Therefore, I feel that the process of creation is like a treatment that allows me to pour out the words that I don’t utter, which feels so good after it is finished,” he says.
Regarding Thief, Daniel says that it is very different from the previous film he submitted to the Festival last year.
“The movie includes some of my feelings and thoughts towards an unfamiliar city. I hope that through this film, I can share with the viewers my observations and thoughts during my one-month stay in Beijing,” he says.
“This film is very simple. I tried to tell a simple story in a simple manner. Because of its simplicity, this type of film should be pretty rare in Macau. I hope that it allows Macau viewers to experience something different, and I am looking forward to their reactions and opinions.”
Daniel admits that he is fascinated by pickpockets, a career that is full of legendary stories and characters in a city like Beijing.
“Through this film, I wanted to explore the idea of stealing, a nuanced word, in terms of a romantic relationship. I believe that many people have had similar experiences. I hope that the audience can see themselves in the story and recognize the ambiguous feeling of love and want, and try to experience together with the main character what he is going through, the frustration he suffers, and then contemplate how they should face their own love and life.”
Animated reality
As well as short-films, the Macao Indies also features animations, like this year’s entry “C-La in Macau” directed by Cobi Lou. Currently a year 4 student at the Macau Polytechnic Institute, this is Cobi’s first time to participate in the Macao Indies and she admits that she felt nervous and stressed as she juggled the production of the animation with the production of her graduation project.
Cobi says that she used to make illustrations but did not really know much about multimedia before studying in college, when she realized that she was actually more interested in it.
“I think that it is easier and quicker for the audience to receive my message through images. They also have a more profound feeling towards visual productions. Therefore, I think that multimedia production is a more direct way to express myself than illustrations and thus I grew fond of it,” she says.
Moreover, Cobi explains that the reason she and her team chose to join MIFVF with an animation is that animations can appeal to a wider range of viewers.
“Comparatively, animation can deliver the message to viewers from more age groups,” she says.
Cobi believes that while movies and animation have a lot in common, the latter is associated more with children and innocence.
“This is different from regular films, which depend on the actors and the shots to express what the director wants to say. You can control more in an animation. Whatever you choose to say, you can simply draw it. Meanwhile, you have to consider much more when making a film. That’s why I think that animation suits me more.”
In terms of the decision to make The C-La, Cobi says that she wants to reflect the problems of Macau through the life of the characters in the animation, in particular the lead character, local house wife C-La.
“There are four sub-stories in The C-La. They mainly focus on the problems of housing prices, inflation, traffic and the Internet. The story of The C-La was actually created by our scriptwriter, Leong Kin, who has already been drawing short stories of The C-La on Facebook and for some magazines.
“After I read the stories, I felt that the characters were so funny, and the contents also matched our daily lives. Therefore, I believed that it would be an interesting piece if it was transformed into an animation.”
While the director of a film needs to guide the actors, Cobi said that a director of an animation needs to come up the storyboard so that the viewers will not get the feeling that they are reading a comic book but are watching an animation.
The director hopes that audiences can be positive like the main character – the C-La – in the animation. She also hopes that there can be more support for locally-produced animations and films.
