The biennial Macau Literary Awards (MLA) are on their way again. The fact is, I have a very strong feeling towards MLA. It is because if I had not previously won the award, my journey of literary creation would have looked very different. Although writing is not about winning awards, the existence of these prizes and honours can serve as a propelling force for writers, as well as an examining for them. Especially for young writers, the recognition that comes with the Awards is an important encouragement. In fact, I would like to see a new category – ‘New Writers Award’ – added to the Awards, exclusively for those who have never received any literary awards or are under a certain age.
Indeed, many of the writers who are active members of the Macau Chinese literary circle have been previous winners of the MLA. Therefore, the importance of the Awards goes without saying. Recently, a new Short Novel category was added to MLA. It has also started accepting literary works in English and Portuguese, with those winning pieces being translated and published in all three languages. I believe that the Awards will help to accumulate more literary treasure for Macau.
When discussing the MLA, we must also mention the Macau literature micro film When Felicity Calls that was co-launched by the Macau Foundation and the Macau Writers Association (you can watch it at the website of the Macau Foundation or on YouTube). This micro film, directed by Chan Nga Lei, has adapted the namesake MLA winning fiction work written by Lok O Loi. What makes this film even more special is that not only are several prominent local writers featured in it, but the film also incorporates music from local singing duo aRiejohn. This can be seen as a trial of visualizing Macau literature.
The story of When Felicity Calls is very simple: a wrongly dialled phone call allows a young aspiring writer to meet a girl and to teach her how to find herself in literature. By mixing the refreshing micro film shooting style with elements of Macau, When Felicity Calls is a combination of literature and film that has rarely been seen in recent years in Macau, and shows a new possible outcome of integrating Macau literature into new media.
With generous support and encouragement from the Macau government, the Macau creative industries are gradually diversifying into several categories. There are, from time to time, cross-category collaborations that are facilitated by the emerging of talents and creations, as well as the improvement of quality. The crux to the next breakthrough will be better integration of literature into movies in order to create more lively stories for locally produced videos. We should thus pay more attention to and anticipate more, the Macau Literary Awards.