Modern American cinema festival kicks off

Cinematheque Passion CEO Rita Wong

Arthouse Cinematheque Passion is currently presenting Macau’s first film festival of modern American films, showcasing 10 revered multicultural productions from the past few years.

The films have been selected on the basis of their multicultural themes, with women and ethnic minorities taking center stage or playing critical roles in many of the films,  “breaking the mold of white male dominance,” according to organizers.

“The United States has played a significant role in world cinema since the beginning of the twentieth century,” Rita Wong, chief executive officer of Cinematheque Passion, told the Times yesterday. “Even though Hollywood’s perennial economic machine has overshadowed its artistic development, American films outside the studio system have continued to mature and impress on the international stage.”

Wong added that new American cinema, with the inclusion of the country’s diverse but underrepresented ethnic makeup, is breaking into a space “full of possibilities that […] showcases the many folds of America’s vibrant culture.”

The films have all received international praise and many of them are festival award recipients. They include the celebrated Sundance hit Columbus; coming-of-age comedy Dope; the first “Iranian vampire Western” A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night; Certain Women, which won the best film award in the London Film Festival 2016; and Get Out, America’s highest-grossing debut feature based on an original screenplay.

In addition to the screenings, Cinematheque Passion invited Derek Lam, a lecturer at the University of Hong Kong to present a seminar exploring modern American cinema culture.

The festival, which is titled New American Cinema: Cinema of Possibilities, began on Saturday and will run until January 28. It is curated by Francisco Lo, a Macau local who has lived in the United States for several years as the co-founder of Film Monitor, an independent film review journal based in Houston. DB