New film festival in December headed by former Venice director

António Faria

The first International Film Festival of Macau (IFFM) will run from December 8 to 13 this year.
Heading the event will be Marco Mueller, the former director of the Locarno, Venice and Rome festivals, as reported in U.S. magazine Variety and confirmed yesterday in a statement by the Macau Government Tourism Office (MGTO). The bureau told the Times that the Macau Films & Television Production and Culture Association would organize the event.
Marco Mueller was recently associated with the Beijing and Silk Road film festivals in the mainland. Variety reported that Mueller “will make the IFF Macau his main job, but he also has a teaching role in Switzerland for one semester per year.”
The festival’s U.S. selector is Elvis Mitchell, a well-known critic and programmer.
The event, backed by the Social Affairs and Culture Secretariat, will hold its first screening sessions at the Macau Science Center, with later market screenings at the UA Galaxy Cinemas.
Forty-five titles will be chosen for the first edition of the festival, Variety reported. The event will also include galas, a film competition and a thematic sidebar.
The IFFM was timed to follow a similar event in the neighboring SAR. The CineAsia convention and trade show will take place in Hong Kong two days prior to the festival and is expected to draw many international figures to the region.
The festival has a budget of around MOP80 million, supported by the government with the help of a commercial sponsor.
Reflecting on the festival, local director António Caetano Faria remarked: “Any event related to film and filmmaking is potentially interesting.” Nevertheless, to better form an opinion, he added that “we need to know what that target is, the size and also the program of this event.”
“To have Macau in the worldwide film festival circuit is always a good thing, but all will depend on the way it will be done,” he continued, recalling that “there are already some who are hesitant about festivals that maybe did not work so well, and some other people who are trying to do independent film festivals, but we need to understand the audience here.”
“In Macau [and also in Hong Kong] there is a large community of independent film fans,” he said, also expressing his wish for “a less commercial film festival, which would also include younger producers.”
Faria – who won the Macao Indies jury award twice for co-directing “Into the Void” in 2013 and “Time Travel” in 2011 – believes more could be done to support the development of the film panorama in the territory, from festivals to workshops and TV-based promotions. But he stresses that “there are also things currently being done in this field.”

Thomas Lim

The director cites the Macau Cultural Centre (CCM) as an example, which in his opinion “is doing a good job at the independent cinema level, giving opportunities to new people to produce films and also help to direct those independent film festivals.”
The Times also spoke to Thomas Lim, an actor and filmmaker originally from Singapore who was based in Macau for a long time, where he directed the film “Roulette City.”
“I believe any film event – or in this case, a film festival – is always good for the local industry. However, it will be even better if the festival is also keen to help promote films made locally,” he said.
Lim, who is currently in town to conduct a two-week screenwriting workshop and intends to shoot a new film here soon, also noted: “Most festivals have a local section that supports local films and helps filmmakers to get more exposure and other benefits.”
Although Lim believes the IFFM will “target only outsiders for its first edition,” he added, “I believe that this can change in later years when the Macau industry becomes stronger.”
The hardest part of filmmaking is “reaching an audience,” he says, adding that the IFFM should “help to foster Macau productions in some way.”
“I feel that a festival like this is definitely a great opportunity for local filmmakers to showcase their work, and I hope it will motivate Macau filmmakers to create more projects and encourage the festival to incorporate a ‘Macau section’ for their future editions, if they don’t already have one in December,” Lim told the Times.
“It takes two hands to clap. If there aren’t enough local productions to showcase or compete, this [local section] cannot exist,” he concluded.
MGTO announced in a statement that the IFFM aims to become a major film hub for the Greater China and international markets.
A formal announcement to introduce the content and concept of the festival will be released in mid-March, MGTO confirmed. *with Paulo Barbosa

57 Chinese theatres concealed box office sales

The China Film Copyright Association, together with several movie companies, announced that it is monitoring 57 mainland theatres following suspicions of concealed box office sales concerning three recent motion pictures, namely “From Vegas to Macau 3,” “The Mermaid,” and “The Monkey King 2,” according to a Chengdu Business Daily report.
Starting on February 4, a cinema in Shandong province screened the three movies three days before their official release, which reportedly violated the producer’s rights. Other cinemas were also reported to be guilty of inappropriate operations as to obtain more customers.
The announcement also disclosed the amount of sources providing links to pirated movies. Until 12 a.m. on February 10th, the surveillance system monitored the whole network and spotted several “pirate links” to the movies, part of them found on Youtube.
According to a mainland survey, the rampant spread of piracy throughout the film industry has caused losses to China’s domestic film producers of up to 55 percent.