The Projector | Macau’s Cinematheque Passion became an art house film hub, it will be missed

All good things must come to an end. An overused sentimental saying, true, but it’s something that resonates with film buffs in Macau as they bid adieu to the Audiovisual CUT Association, operator of the city’s sole art house cinema.

Since 2017, CUT has transformed Cinematheque Passion – based in a once abandoned colonial-era mansion just around the corner from the tourist landmark The Ruins of St Paul’s – into a film hub with a level of innovation and dynamism on a par with its regional counterparts. Its achievements could serve as an uplifting tale for aspiring film programmers, and proof of cinema’s power in galvanising social progress.

Defying the social, economic and cultural odds ingrained in Macau – a city with a tenth of Hong Kong’s population, and with no established film industry to speak of – the cinematheque helped consolidate a community of cinephiles and aspiring movie critics through its left-field programming, spin-off events, workshops and exhibitions.

And all of this unfolded within a venue CUT basically built from scratch when the government awarded it a three-year contract for the cinema in 2016.

Among its programmes were retrospectives of well-known filmmakers such as Pedro Almodóvar, Xavier Dolan and Hirokazu Koreeda, and less-hailed directors such as Kazakhstan’s award-winning Sergei Dvortsevoy (Ayka; 2018), whose early films have yet to be shown in Hong Kong.

The cinematheque also hosted a festival dedicated to African-American cinema – something Hong Kong is yet to see – and it’s also the venue for an annual documentary festival in which the programmers harnessed and fostered Macau’s ties with Portugal through entries from the latter’s heavyweight auteurs (Lois Patiño, Pedro Costa).