It took about a year to A City Called Macau to go through censorship in China due to its gambling content, the film’s director, Li Shaohong, told the media.
“It took quite long to go through the censorship, so we missed all the major film festivals last year and when it was shown in cinemas the slot that was given was not the best, to say the least”, Li said yesterday in an interview.
That’s why Li Shaohong describes the A City Called Macau release in mainland China as “a sort of a bad gambling act”, despite the good rates given by the public in online video platforms, such as iQiyi.
The film exposes the recent decades of economic reform when people suddenly started having money.
“The movie is about gambling and I think this has been the first film in Chinese cinema about gambling. It was challenging to make it. The movie is set in China opening up and reform period of time. It reflects that era quite realistically, and that was challenging too”, Li Shaohong, a China’s Fifth Generation director, said
However, she added, “I am quite satisfied because what I wanted was to show this film to the audience and that is accomplished”.
“We had quite a good reaction from the market especially from the young generation of moviegoers, who seemed to like the film, the rating has been quite good especially in the iQiyi screening website, our rating has been quite high”, Li Shaohong stressed.
The filmmaker also expressed satisfaction for having her film at the International Film Festival and Awards Macao (IFFAM) to mark the 20th anniversary of Macau’s 1999 return to Chinese sovereignty.
“We did not miss this one, that is a good result. We have come to Macau after one year since the film release. I think it’s the right time because this year marks the 20th anniversary of the handover, so it’s’ quite good timing and significant to be here”, Li added.
The subject matter of the film was the main reason for censors to delay the film release, said the director.
“Gambling is something unheard-of in Chinese cinema”, she explained. While raising the issue of problematic gambling “is a good thing”, censors “were more concerned with having too many casino scenes and that the film, in a way, could promote gambling”.
“For us filmmakers, we are quite in a dilemma in terms of how to tell the stories”, she explained.
The film was almost entirely shot in Macau.
Concerning casino scenes, “the censor was very strict in not showing scenes promoting gambling or teaching people to gamble. For example, we had some scenes were the protagonist goes to the casino trying to show a friend how this game work and those scenes were actually cut, deleted in the final cut”, the filmmaker said.
The film is set within the day that the territory was handover to China, on December 20, 1999, and 2014, when China’s anti-corruption campaign put a halt to the growth in Macau’s gaming revenue.
“As you may know most of the gamblers and casino goers are from Mainland China, and there are all sorts of people coming from China to Macau to entertain themselves and to gamble, they are government officials, business people, entertainers, artists from all segments of the society and certain things that couldn’t have happened in Mainland, happen in Macau, because of this background”, the filmmaker added.
“Macau has historically shared a very close tie with Mainland China, unlike Hong Kong, which is an international port. Here you can see all sorts of people from the Mainland and basically you can see a reflection of lives of mainlanders in Macau”, she added.
A City Called Macau is an adaptation of Yan Geling’s 2012 novel of the same name. “What I like about the novel is the very unique female angle looking at a historically significant period of time in China, also she looks at the changes in people around the main protagonist”, Li Shaohong explained.
“I asked her [Yan Geling] to write the first script and to retain this very original female perspective of a historical moment and the emotional side of the female observer”, the director disclosed.
Yan wrote the script with the help of two other writers, Lu Wei – the scriptwriter of Zhang Yimou’s To live and Chen Kaige’s Farewell My Concubine – and Chen Wen Qiang, an award winner Hong Kong scriptwriter.
The film A City Called Macau, screened yesterday at IFFAM, stars Bai Baihe, Huang Jue, IFFAM’s talent ambassador Carina Lau and Wu Gang.
By Claudia Aranda
