Every year the Macao International Film and Video Festival hosts the Macao Indies providing an opportunity for local aspiring film makers to show off their latest creations. This year’s winner was the 44-minute film Yesterday Once More by Emily Chan, a retrospective look at the subject of puppy love. Emily noted that the greatest challenges in making the film were balancing her creative ideas as a screenwriter and the budgetary and logistical constraints of making a low budget film. She also needed to work with a number of first time actors and provide a lot of extra direction. Nonetheless, the judges were suitably impressed with the overall level of production and final result.
Recently Emily has had a string of successes. As well as winning at this year’s Macao Indies, last year she received the “Best Film Proposal Award” at the “First Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Film Production Investment and Trade Fair” in 2014.
Also last year, the young director was involved in the first joint venture commercial film production between China and Macau, obtaining the first “License for Public Projection of Films” in mainland China with the movie Timing. To make the film she borrowed over one million patacas, but after successfully selling it to CCTV she covered all her production costs.
She has now signed a contract to direct a total of three commercial films, each with an investment of over 20 million RMB.
However all this success has not necessarily come easily, and amazingly Emily did not even go to film school. Just three short years ago, she remembers being a somewhat rebellious adolescent who went to Beijing by herself with MOP70,000, no contacts and no real plan for the future.
Prior to that move, Emily had studied journalism in University of Macau, but her passion has always been filmmaking. She started working on her first short film at 21, and finished her first directorial work at 23. After graduating from her journalism studies, given the high tuition fees in Hong Kong, she decided instead to go to Beijing to chase her film making dream.
“Those three years in Beijing were a calming-down period for me. I needed to think about how I should move forward. Beijing made me grow up.”
’’Growing up’’ involved some challenging experiences:
“I worked as a intern on a film crew receiving just 150RMB after working 20 hours per day; wrote scripts for some advertising directors who later took my work but didn’t pay me; and once had to go drinking with some mine owners to try to get more sponsorship for my film, and ended up hiding in the toilet crying,” she recalls.
A stranger to Beijing, Emily didn’t have any of the advantages she had in Macau and needed to work hard to get into the “film circle” there. She sent out her CV to almost all the big filmmaking companies to try her luck, and finally got an internship in a 3D-shooting company. In summer of 2013, she went to the mountainous areas of Hubei province with the company to shoot 3D films. She carried heavy photographic equipment up the mountains, and could only sleep two hours every day, but instead of complaining about the hard conditions, she took the chance to learn how to film in 3D. During the internship, Emily got to know the people working in this field, started to make new friends and gradually entered into “the circle”.
“I didn’t study filmaking, so there was always a time that people doubted my films, but it doesn’t matter. Different people take different paths, and as long as I can make my films in the end, that’s fine. I don’t like to make excuses for myself.”
Over the years, most Macau films have generally been sponsored by the government, and it has been rare for directors to need to invest a lot of their own money into the productions.
“This time [with Timing] we tried something new, and made it. I think this is very important for the industry.”
Timing will be screened in Macau in July and Emily plans to use the local box office receipts to help younger students fund their graduation works.
“Because making films is quite hard indeed.”
Emily’s favorite director is Ang Lee, because “he can handle both the commercial part and the artistic area…making money while expressing his own creative ideas.”
As one of Macau’s new generation of filmmakers, Emily is also concerned about the future of the industry. She thinks there are two critical factors for the industry to develop: one is to make commercially viable films so the industry can be self-sufficient; the other is to make more artistic films to participate in more film festivals and show Macau to the world. The local box office cannot afford the costs of film production therefore Macau films need think about exporting its productions.
Regarding government support, Emily thinks it’s more important to make new policies than to just “give money”. If the local theaters can open up some specific times or sessions just to screen local films, that will help a lot.
“But of course, the industry itself should try harder to make better films that are worth audiences sitting there for 90 minutes.”
“Macau was the first place (in China) that had film screening, and it has a long history of film. I wish, through the efforts of this new generation, that maybe we can help Macau to catch the attention of the Chinese film market, but it will require the efforts of the whole team.”
