“Wandering in the Scenes” - Feature Exhibition of Macao's Changing Landscapes on the Silver Screen

2023.12.19 - 2024.10.20

Free Admission

Since the 1950s, film crews from all over the world have been coming to Macao for filming. With the golden age of Hong Kong cinema in the 1980s, different locations in Macao gradually became more and more popular filming sites. Many familiar movie stars such as Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, Chow Yun-Fat and Sylvia Chang Ai-chia, etc., accompanied their film crews to visit and shoot in the corners of the city that we often pass by. At the beginning of the millennium, local creators began to produce films in Macao, showing a very different vision from that of foreign crews.

With the passage of time, many films have been set in Macao, we all have our own movie memories. This exhibition focuses on the "scenes'' in the hope that the audience can experience Macao again through the images , just like they walk around the various locations in the films. We have meticulously selected four familiar locations (Largo do Lilau, Avenida de Almeida Ribeiro commonly known as San Ma Lo, Ruins of St. Paul's and Taipa Houses) as the center of the exhibition, and selected film clips that were once shot in these locations, supplemented by new shots of the present-day scenes. Filmmakers of different generations and styles have placed Macao in their images. Whether they have used Macao as a symbol of an old era, or made good use of the scenes to echo the plot design and the tone of the scenes, there are always a variety of interpretations of the city in the camera, which reveals the aesthetic attitudes of the respective creators. By comparing the old and new images, we hope to present the alteration of Macao as a film set.