The Last Time I Saw Macao introduction and post-screening discussion with Haden Guest, João Pedro Rodrigues and João Guerra da Mata.

Transcript

For more interviews and talks, visit the Harvard Film Archive Visiting Artists Collection page.

John Quackenbush  0:01  

April 3, 2015, the Harvard Film Archive screened The Last Time I Saw Macao. This is the audio recording of the introduction and post-screening Q&A with Haden Guest and filmmakers João Pedro Rodrigues and João Guerra da Mata.

Haden Guest  0:35  

Good evening ladies and gentlemen. My name is Haden Guest. I'm Director of the Harvard Film Archive. I'd like to begin by first asking you to please turn off any cell phones, any electronic devices that you have, and please refrain from using them tonight.

It's a really great and genuine pleasure to welcome back tonight, the Portuguese co-directors, João Pedro Rodrigues and João Rui Guerra da Mata, here now with a group of recent films that partially turns away from the bold vision of transgressive amour fou that defined the three features they work together on—O Fantasma, Odete and To Die Like a Man—films, sometimes called a trilogy, which were directed by Rodrigues, and on which Guerra da Mata worked as an art director. These films, the two artists presented here at the Harvard Film Archive, back in 201. in what was then their first US retrospective.

The two artists first collaborated as co-directors in 2007 on China China, a visually bold and provocative short film that awakened in them an abiding interest in the titular country—both the setting and subject for a subsequent work. An interest in China, however, both as an actual place rooted in an especially deep and complex history and as an imaginary and elusive imageworld shaped by the feverish fantasies of Western literature and popular culture, and above all in recent years by Hollywood cinema. And so they set off to the former Portuguese territory of Macao, where they made two of the films we'll see tonight, Iec Long and The Last Time I Saw Macao.

Macao occupies a special place for these filmmakers. It’s a city where Guerra da Mata spent formative years of his childhood. While the film began as a documentary recuperation of sorts of Guerra da Mata’s Macao, it quickly became something wonderfully Other—a radically hybridized and shapeshifting film that seamlessly glides between poetic documentary essay and pulp fiction, gracefully shifting voice and genre register. The title The Last Time I Saw Macao could be alternatively read as a Proustian Recherche du temps perdu or Mickey Spillanian cherchez la femme. It's a playful yet never coy film that brilliantly makes clear the tremendous resourcefulness and storytelling acumen of these two artists. Qualities equally apparent in the most recent film, Iec Long, which screens tonight in a special sneak preview. This is in fact its first US screening. The film returns not only to Macao, but to an actual site that we're going to glimpse in The Last Time I Saw Macao in order to uncover—patiently, archaeologically, poetically—the hidden and fascinating history of the now distant colonial past. It's an understated and poignant film that I think counts among their very finest works to date. We're also going to see a very short short, Allegoria della Prudenza, which is directed by João Pedro Rodrigues who I'm going to invite together with João Rui Guerra da Mata to say a few words about this film and tonight's program. Please join me in welcoming the two João’s.

[APPLAUSE]

João Pedro Rodrigues  4:11  

Hi, good evening. Thank you for your words, Haden. We're very happy to be back here. Actually, I've been here since September as a Radcliffe fellow and I've been here in this room many times because of your wonderful programming—yours and David’s.

But first, there's something that happened yesterday that I cannot avoid talking about because yesterday died our greatest Portuguese director Manoel de Oliveira, and it's a sad event, but he was 106 years old. And I don't know what to do, but just like to ask you for a round of applause to Oliveira.

[APPLAUSE]

Thanks. Yeah, also a very strange coincidence, because Iec Long was first shown to an audience the day he was 106, last December 11. Strange all these coincidences and all these things that…. finally, I don't know.

About these films…. The first film is a very, very short film. It was made for the 70th anniversary of the Venice Film Festival. They asked several people, several directors to make a very short short. And it's also an homage to someone that died. Just thinking about dead people. Another great Portuguese director, Paulo Rocha, [who] had died recently. And it's also kind of like, a time travel from Japan to where Paulo Rocha was happy, and where we are also happy, and to Asia where we are really happy. And this goes back to Macao because João Rui lived in Macao as Haden said, when he was a child, and that's why we started to become obsessed by... or he was already obsessed, but I shared his obsession through all the stories that he told me about that place, which was in a way a fictional place for him, because he remembered it as a child.

João Guerra da Mata  7:23  

Just a few words. So happy to be here, so thank you for inviting us. And thank you all for coming. We’ll have a chance to talk afterwards, I suppose, so why don’t I let you guys see the film and then we'll talk about it. Thank you. Enjoy.

[APPLAUSE]

John Quackenbush  7:52  

And now, Haden Guest, João Pedro Rodrigues and João Guerra da Mata.

Haden Guest  8:10  

Gentlemen, thank you so much. I'm so glad that you survived [LAUGHS] to be here with us tonight. First of all it’s fantastic to see these films together and to see especially that kind of dialogue between Iec Long and The Last Time I Saw Macao, the film that I'd like to begin the conversation with. So, you were inspired—by a kind of detective project—to go back in search of the Macao of your childhood. And we see that thread in the film, yet The Last Time I Saw Macao is so much more and I was wondering if you could speak about how you went from that seed, that kernel of an idea to a much more complex and nuanced project.

João Guerra da Mata  9:06  

As I think you said, it all started as a documentary. I've known João Pedro for twenty- something years now, and I think since the first day, I told him about Macao, about my memories about Macao. And it has been a project of ours to go back to Macao—well, as tourists basically—but it never happened. One day, we just decided to apply for some money from the Portuguese Cultural Cinema Institute to make a documentary about Macao, about my memories in Macao. But the thing is that once we got there, we understood that we were really not interested in a documentary about Macao anymore. Because, well, my memories were basically fictions. I mean, of course, you always fantasize. Memories are fictions if you think about it. But anyway... Such a cliche, but the truth is that the more we were involved– I mean, yes, we did start to do it as a documentary. We started by shooting the house where I used to live and places that were familiar to me, that I used to go either with my parents or on my own. But then we understood that we were getting literally lost in Macao and finding new things, and the city was changing. At every corner we looked, we could imagine fictional situations happening there. Suddenly, Macao was really telling us stories—stories that we were not necessarily looking for. And yeah, more and more fiction. I mean, although it is my name, and yes, it's true that I went, I was– Well, yeah, thirty years later, I was there in Macao.

Although we had a script—like for a documentary—had ideas and all that, we were shooting and we were rewriting what our initial ideas were. And then we would go to Portugal, we would look at the images and we would see that we could actually make a fiction. So it was really a process of shooting, editing, writing, editing, shooting, because we went three times to Macao, so basically, Macao is, still for us, a place where everything can happen. And so it's of course, a fictional place. Perhaps this Macao only exists in our minds. I mean, actually, it's true that—it is in the credits—it wasn't only short in Macao. It was shot in Macao, shot in several parts in China. It was even shot in Portugal.

João Pedro Rodrigues  12:30  

I think it's kind of like a mutant film. It evolved so much. We didn't know at first what it was going to be because it was kind of like a mess in the beginning. And then we discovered the film little by little by shooting and by being there. And I think also this question about documentary fiction, we were not really worried about it. So it was made with money for a documentary—means usually less money. It's the only difference. And it was made with a very, very small crew. So it was just the two of us [and] several guys because we went three times to Macao_

João Guerra da Mata

Altogether we were five.

João Pedro Rodrigues

We had an assistant sound guy—several, because the three times… usually because people are not available all the time. We work mostly with the guy I usually work with, Nuno Carvalho, and then an assistant and then we had some help in Macao, because as his character says, almost nobody speaks Portuguese or English in Macao, not as in Hong Kong where most people speak English. And so to get inside some places, we needed to speak Cantonese.

João Guerra da Mata  14:10  

That's the reason why I brought up the documentary thing because the whole thing was designed or structured as a documentary. I mean, to shoot in every single place in Macao, we needed a special license, and for that we had to apply. So actually, it was very well planned towards a documentary. But although we were shooting it as a documentary–

João Pedro Rodrigues  14:37  

We justified it as–

João Guerra da Mata  14:41  

I mean, yeah, in the sense of applying. I'm not sure if we had asked for permission to make a film about the end of the world or something [LAUGHS], if they would have agreed in Macau. I don't know.

Haden Guest  14:59  

I wonder if we could speak about your two voices in the film. This is one thing I really love, the way in which you maintain these two separate—at times contradictory—voices. At one point, João Pedro, your voice seems to be the kind of official voice offering us the larger perspective over the city. And then at other times, you seem to be the more personal, the more introspective, actually, you know, questioning what João Rui is saying, You're the detective, but you're also the man looking for his childhood, not only the [?law?], so I was wondering if you could speak about the way in which you maintain these different voices in kind of dialogue, and at times, almost seeming to deliberately, willfully, playfully contradict themselves.

João Pedro Rodrigues  15:52  

I think “playful” isn't really– We had a lot of fun making this film and we wanted to have fun. Mostly films of mine are fun to make, even if they're not fun themselves, I don't know. But also in the beginning, we didn't know how to do or what to do. But we had this idea, or we knew that there had to be both voices, and he would be the main character, the one leading the action. There was a moment when we thought perhaps it didn't make sense that I spoke. And so that's why my voice becomes... like in the beginning, it's the voice that “This is Macao blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah” and then I'm questioning him and exposing our personal relationship. But we did it as we edited the film, because also we had, I don't know, almost 200 hours of rushes, and it was very difficult to go through all that. But there was a moment in the shooting that we understood the direction the film was taking, and then we followed more or less that direction, even going zigzag. The idea of view of using these voices also came while doing the film also. How to do it. Yeah.

Haden Guest  17:50  

Well, the voice has also defined the relationship of sound and image that's so important in this film, where you have the offscreen, and at one point, there’s also this idea that the sounds create a kind of reimagination of what we're seeing. And even then we have a moment where, for instance, they don't quite match, or we have a voice speaking on the telephone, but there's nobody in that telephone booth. So I was wondering if you could speak a bit about this. At one point you've spoken about this before as coming from film noir, this idea of this strong authorial presence at the same time is undermined, but at the same time, it also seems to be that you're trying to create a kind of tension between the image and the sound, a tension that at times, the image actually resists the voices, resists the kind of definition, the kind of presence that is being imposed on there. Other times embraces it. Other times, it also, I think, gives a kind of freedom to the viewer.

João Guerra da Mata  18:54  

Well, it's true that we decided that this would be like a film noir where everything was happening in the offscreen thing.

João Pedro Rodrigues  19:06  

Because we had this idea that it would be also like a B movie, and like a very cheap movie, in every sense. There's something that I like very much with B movies is their efficiency. They are incredibly efficient and very–

Haden Guest

Their economy, right.

João Pedro Rodrigues

Their economy and it’s a lot about visual ideas, because they didn't have a lot of money, they had to shoot fast, whatever. And I liked this idea of trying to tell a story without reenacting it, in a way. We had always this idea that we get to a place and whatever happened, already happened or is going to happen or has happened just like it. But also not doing it like with a rule.Sometimes we felt that it would be nice to just hear something offscreen where like, Candy, you hear her being shot. And that was really fun. That was one of the pleasures of doing this film.

João Guerra da Mata 20:38  

It was incredibly hard work, you have to believe me, because sometimes we were choosing images and then thinking, Okay, we love these images. What could happen here?

João Pedro Rodrigues  20:50  

Because many ideas came from what we shot. When we shot them, we didn't know what was going to happen or which place they were going to take in the film.

João Guerra da Mata  20:58  

And that brings us back to the documentary part, which, in a way, I think this film is still a documentary, although it's not a documentary, or perhaps it is a documentary about our Macao, the Macao that only exists in our minds. And that's what I was trying to say. Or perhaps we're just reinventing Macao through B movies, film noir–

João Pedro Rodrigues  21:20  

And itself, and also by itself.

João Guerra da Mata  21:22  

Yeah, by itself, using all these references—if you want to call them “cinephile references,” it's okay—but basically references and a lot of those things also came and that's the importance of the voiceover and the offscreen thing is that when I was a child in Macao, there was no Portuguese television, so there was only English television from Hong Kong and mainland China TV in Mandarin and of course, Cantonese television from Hong Kong. And so before I learned how to speak either English or Cantonese, I was watching films without understanding what was happening, so I had to create my own story for the images. Also, an interesting thing is that—I'm not sure if you guys know—but Tintin, it’s–

João Pedro Rodrigues

It’s called Tintin. Hergé.

Haden Guest

Yeah, Tintin. Right.

João Guerra da Mata  22:38  

Okay, so the first book my father ever gave me from Tintin—which was really popular back in the 70s, 60s—was The Blue Lotus and it was in French, and I couldn't speak French. So I basically read—or not read—but I saw the whole book, and I made up the story. And a few years later, when I finally understood what was there, I was very disappointed with the story. [HADEN LAUGHS] And this is totally true. And it was Blue Lotus. And I was born in Mozambique, that was before going to Macao. So it's just one coincidence. And so I mean, all these things happened because we… also because we didn't have actors, to tell you the truth. I mean, this was very pragmatic.

João Pedro Rodrigues  23:35  

Yeah, most people you see we dressed up with different clothes…

João Guerra da Mata  23:41  

We have a backpack with different clothes for the different characters. And sometimes I would be the guy with the black gloves or João Pedro would be the guy in the white gloves. Either João Pedro will be shooting or I will be shooting. Some of the characters actually in the film, they don't even know they're in the film, like Candy’s friend, the guy [who’s] supposed to meet my character by the sex shop. We decided we'll be at the sex shop because there's only one sex shop in Macao and it's that one—that doesn't exist anymore. So the idea that there was one sex shop, it's the sex shop. We were shooting that neon street and we noticed this guy going up and down the street with his mobile and then we decided he would be a character. So it's the montage idea, going back to the basics of editing.

Haden Guest  24:42  

The guy running at night in black. Was he just practicing running or was that a…?

João Guerra da Mata  24:48  

He was practicing running.

Haden Guest  24:49  

Okay, that's wonderful. [LAUGHS] So, let's talk a bit about Iec Long, and actually maybe you guys come over…. It feels like you're running over...

João Pedro Rodrigues  25:02  

I feel better there.

Haden Guest  25:03  

Well, it looked like you were about to run out the door! [LAUGHS]

I'd love to talk about Iec Long, because in some ways, it seems it's almost a response to The Last Time I Saw Macao? And maybe perhaps—I want to call it a kind of critique—but it seems that there's an idea running through Macao, which is one of the quotes from Hollywood cinema, this idea of, you know, the Far East is inscrutable and mysterious and unknown and unknowable and at the same time here, you zone in on this one place and you discover this rich history, discover this personal voice. And here you even pull out a character or a figure that we see in Macao at the beginning in the site that is the site of the war game at the beginning. So I was wondering if you could speak to this film.

João Pedro Rodrigues  26:06  

There's even some shots that are the same.

Haden Guest  26:08  

Yes, exactly… The dominos table...

João Pedro Rodrigues  26:13  

I think we also didn't mention, of course like for The Last time I saw Macao, there is a film which was very important, Macao by Sternberg. And Jane Russell in the film because we took one of the songs she sings in that film. And also other things like the shoes. I don't know if you're familiar with it with that film. But that film tells the story of Jane Russell, she's like kind of like a dancer, singer of dubious repute

João Guerra da Mata  26:56  

A dancer and a singer [in] the 50s.

João Pedro Rodrigues  26:59  

Yeah, and she goes to Macao in a boat—the film starts in the boat—and in the boat she meets Robert Mitchum with whom she'll be in love. And the way they meet is she asks this guy that is selling silk stockings… This guy tells her that he will give her a pair of silk stockings, and he goes to her cabin, and he's trying to abuse her. And she has a very high heeled shoe. She takes the shoe off and just throws it to the guy and the shoe misses him and goes through the window and out of the window, there's Robert Mitchum, and it hits Robert Mitchum. And he picks up the shoe and he looks inside the cabin, and he goes in and he says “Which one of you is Cinderella?” [LAUGHS] And, so it all came– Also, a coincidence… It’s strange, coincidences. But when we were shooting the film in Macao, we discovered in the Macanese papers—there's still two papers in Portugues, that are published in Macao—that she had died. Jane Russell had died. And this all started to make sense to us. And I had shot a previous film called To Die Like a Man with Cindy Scrash who plays Candy in the film. And I wanted to work with her again, so we called her back. And she became Candy. And now I'm lost because I was talking about Iec Long…

João Guerra da Mata

Okay, so…

João Pedro Rodrigues

He’ll continue.

João Guerra da Mata 29:02  

About the shoes. That shoe–

Haden Guest  29:07  

Which we'll see more of.

João Guerra da Mata  29:08  

Exactly. In a short film that is also playing here called Red Dawn, which is about a market in Macao. While we were shooting The Last Time I Saw Macao, João Pedro and I came to the conclusion that we should have one film about that market, the red market. And we did that one and then we released The Last Time I Saw Macao. And at the time, I was trying to convince João Pedro that we should make a film only about Iec Long firecracker factory in Macao. And so then we went back to Iec Long where we shot—yes, we did use some of–

João Pedro Rodrigues  30:05  

Some of the material that we had.

João Guerra da Mata  30:06  

–some of the material that we had already used in Last Time I Saw Macao exactly to make that connection.

João Pedro Rodrigues  30:19  

It’s “symmetry” perhaps because...

João Guerra da Mata  30:22  

Symmetry, yes. Not connection but symmetry. That's the right word. So Iec Long was still operating when I lived in Macao. And it was a place that, I think, it obsessed me because I could see– I remember stories about the people that work there. Because the factory closed during the 70s, and I still remember the workers, some of the workers, the guys that used to deal with gunpowder. They were very dark, very tanned, because they had to work almost naked. But their arms up to their elbow more or less and the legs up to their knee were stained white, because they had to make what's called the “white powder'' which is a combination of– Well, anyway…

João Pedro Rodrigues

The most dangerous powder.

João Guerra da Mata

Yeah, it's the most dangerous powder. And I remember that they were very scary, in a way. Because the way they walked…

João Pedro Rodrigues  31:47  

And I guess for a kid… You were a kid...

João Guerra da Mata  31:50  

Yeah, I mean, I was eleven or something. But of course, it was a factory. It was closed. I mean, I couldn't go in. And then while we were shooting The Last Time I Saw Macao, we understood the factory was abandoned. And I mean, there were so many—because firecrackers and fireworks was probably the biggest industry in Macao until the 70s. That and matches.

João Pedro Rodrigues

And incense.

João Guerra da Mata 

And incense, yeah. Up until the 70s, and then the textile industry came, and all the factories–

João Pedro Rodrigues

It took over.

João Guerra da Mata 

All the factories were foreclosed and this is the last one. It is [?rotting?] as you can see. It's now being restored. And while we were shooting—I mean, yes, we managed to shoot inside—and there was a war game going on when we went there that day to shoot the factory that you can see in The Last Time I Saw Macao. But while we were shooting, there were all these news [articles] in the Portuguese newspapers saying that the factory was going to be demolished because they needed space for yet another Las Vegas type of casino. And we thought we really had to come back and do something in Iec Long before it disappeared. Then when we got there, we understood that they were starting to restore it, to do some sort of cultural something. But it was these huge fights that started, I think, in the late 90s until two or three years ago, about destroying...

Haden Guest

Turning it into a museum or something.

João Guerra da Mata

Because it is a huge, huge piece of land. It's got a lake inside, as you can see. And so it's very, very valuable. But it is the last example of a firecracker factory in Macao because now they have all moved to China mainland.

João Pedro Rodrigues  34:11  

And we felt that the place was kind of haunted. That's why we had this idea of shooting these kids in Super 8

João Guerra da Mata  34:22  

While we were investigating we understood that there are absolutely no statistics about—I mean you know exactly how many men and women died—but there's absolutely no statistics about kids. Officially, no kids ever worked there, but we did find the photographs.

Haden Guest  34:40  

Well, I'd love to hear a bit more about Uncle Kan, the figure, the man, because like Macao, this is a man returning to his childhood, but here, it's a very different childhood. We hear about suffering, we hear about pain, so it's a different kind of nostalgia. Again, seemingly in counterpoint or in dialogue with The Last Time I Saw Macao. Could you tell us a bit more about...

João Guerra da Mata  35:12  

Okay, about Uncle Kan… If you see the credits, the name of the guy is actually different from the name he says, because he doesn’t know he’s in the film.

João Pedro Rodrigues  35:27  

No, it's also because we built up with– There's these records of workers that worked in the factory that we found in libraries, and so what he says is not just the story of one man. In a way, it's also an invention based of course in truth, but it's also like a fictional character. Then we found this guy that had this really deep and strange voice [who] spoke Cantonese.

João Guerra da Mata  36:09  

So he is the guardian, really.

João Pedro Rodrigues  36:11  

He’s the guardian of the–

João Guerra da Mata  36:13  

He's the guy that opened and closed–

João Pedro Rodrigues  36:15  

And he worked there really

João Guerra da Mata  36:16  

He worked there and he still lives there. But we decided to use him almost as a representative of people [who] work there, of kids [who] work there. They spend their whole life there. While we were researching for [information on] Iec Long, we understood—from papers, from police reports—we understood there was always this story coming up about six eight-year-old kids, what they did, all the methods of making firecrackers, and so I suppose what we did was we created a biography for for this guy that is the biography of so many kids [who] worked in that factory. So he was not really a fictional character.

João Pedro Rodrigues  37:24  

Yeah, he isn't a fictional character, but he... What was I going to say? Something that I forgot...

João Guerra da Mata  37:35  

I really liked the idea about that person in particular... What we really liked was he was really always kind of hiding from the camera. And this idea again, of in and out... You only see... glimpses?

Haden Guest

You see him right on the edge of the frame, right.

João Guerra da Mata

He is always trying to escape the framing. And again, we talk about the in and out and these voices always off again, and then we were very lucky to find these old Cantonese men [who] still speak an incredible Cantonese… the “sparrow” language, which I think that's how it’s said, how on the mainland [they] used to call it. They used to call Cantonese the “sparrow language'' because it's very melodic and very slow.

Haden Guest  38:44  

Let's take some questions, comments from the audience. If you have any, would you please raise your hands and we have microphones on either side of the room? Any questions for our artists tonight? Patrick Keating here in the front.

Audience 1  39:06  

I really enjoyed the films. Thank you. I was wondering if you could talk maybe more about the sound design, and if you could get technical, that would be great. I was really impressed with this with the sound design in the last one, especially just how it gets so loud, and then so quiet. And just how long did it take for you to cut the sound? How long did it take for you to mix the sound? Because I was really impressed with the sound design.

João Pedro Rodrigues  39:42  

Macao is also a place where it can be very noisy and very silent. Mostly people think it's a very noisy place because people don't get... Macao is kind of a small place, and most people go to where the casinos are. But if you go to where the people live... Macao is a peninsula and two islands and these two islands are almost just one island nowadays because they reclaimed so much land from the sea or from the delta of the river—because it's in the delta of the River of the Pearls—that they are almost connected. When João Rui lived there was an isthmus... the road of the isthmus, which was a very, very thin road, or…  You don't say “thin,” you say...

Haden Guest

Narrow.

João Pedro Rodrigues

Yeah. But we always had direct sound, but most of the sound is reconstructed. There's a lot of foley. And we did that as we were editing the film. So we did the sound editing at the same time. Because usually, when you edit a film, you do the image and then you go to the sound editing. But the film was so much into that friction between sound and image that everything was done at the same time. But then finally, because in Portugal, there are no really good studios, and the film was mixed in France, and so we did improvised foleys—a lot of things were improvised foleys that we did better in France before mixing the film. And then we had an extra, I don't know, two weeks of sound editing before the real mix. And the mix of the film was like, two weeks and a half, three weeks, I think. Two weeks and half perhaps. I don't remember anymore. But it's a lot of recreated sounds and also sounds that were not like from that shot because the sound recorder also had recorded other sounds. I don't know what you call sort of the sounds that you just don't record just like the direct sound, you just record other sounds. And as João Rui said, when we understood the path the film was going to take, we needed some extra—mostly fictional—scenes, and some of those scenes, we did them in Lisbon. Like the moment when there's the light in the cage for the transformation that you understand that people are transforming themselves into animals. That was shot in Lisbon. And we really like this idea of playing with place and that a lot of it is not in Macao, most is in Macao, but there's a lot of it that is not in Macao. There's Guangzhou, there's... What else? Yeah, he told [you] already. [LAUGHS] Yeah, but we like this idea of making a playful film. And playing with genre, of course, and trying to find our own way of doing it

João Guerra da Mata  44:08  

About Iec Long, I suppose one has to survive Chinese New Year's in China to understand how loud it is. I mean, if you're not used to it, it's almost unbearable. It's really really loud. And that's part of the fun. I personally absolutely adore it. But it is very loud. So if we're making a film about a firecracker factory, well, you really have to push it up. I mean, the sound. But also we're dealing with a really serious subject. I mean, all the kids and stuff, and well eventually ghosts if you want to think like that. And we wanted to experiment with Super 8 the first time that we did it—and Super 8 without sound—and we really wanted just to show Super 8 the way it is, I mean, no sound or anything. And I suppose one could say, after all that noise, you need some silence. But that's not the idea. The idea was to make you actually look at the kids, especially one kid—at his face. So after we've introduced all that noise—at least the first time—when you stop the noise, and the kid is staring at you for such a long time. I suppose that's what we wanted. We wanted you to look at him. But as João Pedro said, a lot of the sounds were created. Not the fireworks; I suppose that would be very difficult to recreate. Not the fireworks, but yes, we did have some some foleys and–

João Pedro Rodrigues  46:01  

But in Iec Long, there's much less of that; it's much more direct sound. Because it's a film that also goes in another direction, even if they go parallel, in a way.

João Guerra da Mata  46:15  

Yeah, we did take [many] more liberties in The Last Time I Saw Macao, the same way we did with the editing and the whole story. I think we were exploring, in a way. We were reinventing, not just that territory, but also the way– It was the first feature film that we did together. And that goes back to one voice contradicting the other because sometimes we have different ideas.

João Pedro Rodrigues  46:48  

Yeah, we fought a lot.

João Guerra da Mata  46:52  

We did fight a lot. Well, we always do, [LAUGHS] but sometimes, I mean, I think that's it. I mean, sometimes I am the detective. I mean, in a sense, some of the things I say—especially when I'm talking about Macao—it's my real feelings towards Macao, and what, in my opinion, could have happened. But on the other hand, I think we needed another voice, sometimes to call me back to reality, to take me from the detective part, especially when his voice says “Isn't that the place where you used to play?” Just to take me a little bit from the serious...

Haden Guest  47:42  

Right. Are there other questions or comments at all? Oh, I've got a couple here. Yes, right here in the front and then we’ll go in the back.

Audience 2 47:55  

I really enjoyed these things too. Some of this you already touched on, but actually [INAUDIBLE] follow-up in terms of faces in Iec Long versus the fact that in Macao, there’s almost no face shots. And a lot of times in film, you know, face motions are shown more visually, and in a lot of the stories conveyed with looks or this, that, or the next thing, and there isn't any. And some of that, I understand, is by necessity because you didn’t have any actors. So there's that which I thought was sort of interesting. But in addition, I noticed—this might be have something to do with the childhood thing—where a lot of the shots, again in Macao, are like low-angle, I mean, they're sort of down and sort of looking up a lot, it seemed to me, and then also very close. There are always objects that are like partially obscuring your total field of vision. And some of the shots like on the stairways—the stairway stuff in the beginning—and even other scenes, like you're sort of almost like a child maybe peeking around a banister, looking around the corner looking at something. I don’t know how much of that was explicitly “This is what we're gonna try and do,” or... if you just say something about that.

João Pedro Rodrigues   49:31  

I would say that it's not so much like from a lower point of view, it's more we chose just to show a part of... I don't know, imagine that I was shooting just like that little corner there. I believe very much in that when making films, that you could see the hole just for the little piece, and that was enough. There's this idea of concentrating and being economical that we were talking [about] before that was in B movies and also in other stuff. So most of you don't see what is happening, it's offscreen. It's as if this physical piece of a place or a person could, in a way, tell the whole story. I think that's what we explored. But there's the very pragmatic [issue] that we didn't have actors. We played ourselves, so we couldn't we couldn't show our faces. Except Candy. She's the only one where you see her face in the beginning.

João Guerra da Mata  51:26  

I mean, it's true that we didn't have actors, obviously. Otherwise perhaps it would be different. But it's also true that when we decided that we would do it that way, I mean, it wasn't just… Basically, we didn't want to have actors. Basically, we wanted to be a crew of five with our backpacks and changing clothes and looking at something…. I can give you the example. When you have those women doing that kind of a [UNKNOWN] with the badminton thing, we were walking down the street, we went to shoot a temple, we saw that happening in the square, and we thought it was so... I mean, we liked it, and we decided to shoot it. And suddenly one of us— I can't remember who—decided “Oh, let's make a scene,” so “Okay, the guy with the cage will come and will put the cage there.” So I mean, it was also part of the game—our game—to be free and just walk around the city finding places and creating some story for that place. Because I think The Last Time I Saw Macao is really about that. It's about creating fictions in places that interested us.

João Pedro Rodrigues   52:53  

Or like listening to the city, or looking at the city and listening to what the city is telling us.

João Guerra da Mata  53:05  

And it's very interesting what you're saying about like a child looking up. Because now that I think about it, it's true that when I lived in Macao, I would say four stories up would be like the maximun high in Macao. And now you basically tend to look up. You're always really looking up. And that's one of the problems tourists have in Macao, they really don't see the level where the most interesting things are happening. Because they're like so mesmerized by the–

João Pedro Rodrigues  53:39  

The skyscrapers.

João Guerra da Mata  53:42  

-whatever it’s called. By the heights, yeah.

Haden Guest  53:45  

Let's take one last question in the back. Robert, did you want to ask that question?

Audience 3  53:55  

Yeah, I also have a comment about the imagery. I thought it was very, very rich. And I think the fact that you didn't have actors allowed you to show a lot more of the environment and sort of almost serendipitous images that popped in. And you said you'd shot quite a bit of film—200 hours—but I thought you did a really good job of picking out images...

João Pedro Rodrigues 54:24  

It wasn't film. It was digital.

Audience 3

Yeah, I’m using “film” for digital…

João Pedro Rodrigues

It would be impossible for the budget that we had to shoot it on film. I wish...

Audience 3  54:34  

Yeah, no, I understand. But I think that allowed you to to show a lot more of Macau. Like I really feel after seeing both films—but especially The Last Time I Saw Macao—that I know something about the place I didn't know before. In other words, I don't feel that it could have been shot anywhere. You know, the place came through. Did you employ a cinematographer or did you film it yourselves?

João Pedro Rodrigues  55:04  

We did it ourselves. We also had this idea of—as those films like Berlin Symphony of a City or something like that—it's like a personal portrait of this place, Macao. That's our basic idea. That's how we see Macao at that time. Well, perhaps if we did it now, it would be different. But I think films also reflect what you are when you make them. And I believe very much in that.

Haden Guest  55:44  

Please join me in thanking João Pedro Rodrigues, João Guerra da Mata. And we'll be back tomorrow night with another set of wonderful films! Thank you.

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