Portugese filmmaker João Pedro Rodrigues will present and discuss The Last Time I Saw Macao (A Última Vez Que Vi Macau, Portugal, 2012, 82’).
“João Pedro Rodrigues and regular collaborator Joao Rui Guerra de Mata’s The Last Time I Saw Macao opens on a show stopping, lip synch drag performance by Cindy Scrash, made up like an old school burlesque singer, slinking around in front of a tiger cage. This is quickly followed by disjointed shots of a paintball fight, before settling into its willfully disorienting vaguely noir semi-autobiographical essay as languid as Macau itself. Reminiscent of Chris Marker and, obviously, Josef von Sternberg’s Macao, Last Time is light on the duo’s traditional LGBT content and themes and heavy on form and experimentation.
Rodrigues and Guerra de Mata create an old school noir yarn, pulled from the romance of a colonial past, about a femme fatale on the run who keeps slipping past the ‘hero.’ The film’s downbeat conclusion nicely mirrors the overall tone that the co-directors set to convey the idea of how the Portuguese see Macau now—disembodied, abstract, a type of exoticism long since gone—and how some Chinese can get their first taste of the West through the Macau keyhole. The Last Time I Saw Macao is a meticulous, poetic paean to a vanished time and place that is never less than spellbinding.” – The Hollywood Reporter
Preceded by:
Red Dawn (Alvorada Vermelha, Portugal, 2011, 27’)
“a harsh and lyrical documentary shot in Macao’s fish market”
– Locarno International Film Festival
Both films are co-directed with João Rui Guerra de Mata.
The screening is free and open to the entire Institute.
João Pedro Rodrigues was born in Lisbon in 1966. After studying biology at Lisbon University, he attended the Lisbon Film School. In 2000 he directed his first fiction feature, Phantom, which was screened in the 57th Venice Festival’s Official Competition. In 2005, Odete won several awards including a Cinémas de Recherche Special Mention at the Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes. His feature project To Die Like a Man was selected in 2007 by Cinéfondation for L’Atelier in Cannes. His last feature is The Ornithologist (2016).
There will be a special screening of To Die Like a Man at the Downtown Independent, on Monday, March 15 from 11:00 am to 2:00 pm.