The 12th edition of the Macau International Short Film Festival opened yesterday with 21 local productions presented in the event which will run until December 9.
The venue for this year’s event is the Capitol Theatre in the city center, which showed some of the most famous blockbuster films made in Hong Kong when it was in operation more than 20 years ago.
The organizing body announced that this year the festival will see 132 short films, with a combined run-time of 33 hours. The genres posed by the short films include fiction, documentary, animation and music videos.
A special element in this festival is that it will showcase several short films in patuá, celebrating a language unique in the world and native to Macau.
Despite the current pandemic and border restrictions, films were chosen from a pool of countries and regions thanks to technological advancements, with some from less-known film-producing countries, such as Kosovo.
At a press conference yesterday, it was highlighted that the core of the festival is the international competitions called Shorts and Volume, consisting of films officially selected as finalists. This year 113 films and six music videos were selected to take part. All the films in the Shorts session will compete for the awards at the festival.
To winner will be selected by the audience, who are invited to cast their votes to pick their favorite from each genre.
Seminars will also be held to provide a platform for competing film makers from Macau to share their thoughts after their respective screening sessions. Film makers will have the chance to reflect on their production and also to offer a preview of their upcoming projects.
In the festival, there is a masterclasses section, in which professional or experienced film makers will be invited to discuss five topics with the audience, namely film directing, production, scriptwriting, soundtrack and entrepreneurship.
The festival opened with the 8-minute-long Greeting Again: a comedy from Spain by Jesús Lóniego.
Awards will be presented to the winning films and music videos at the closing ceremony. Before the presentation, the local band Evade will give a minimalist-electronic concert. AL
