Abstract

The officially hinted yet unofficial discourse of “Macau-Was-Never-A-Colony” challenges postcolonial studies all hiddenly and mute(d)ly. Its rare presence in the non-Sino-Luso-academic world explains its legitimate absence. The multi-centenary Portuguese presence in or colonization of Macau marked only its attachedness to the verges of Empires. From its transitional period in the last stage of the Portuguese Empire to its self-governance under the much larger Chinese context, Macau, or better say, its name and its appearance, was no more than a short-term machine of nostalgia. In this background, the emergence of Macau cinema from the last colonial times until its present contributes to a discourse towards the production of an identity, whose future is still unknown. The proposed essay questions precisely this role of Macau cinema in this process of (re)nostalgization in the coming decades until 2049, the end of a promise of two powers that decided its 50-year long would-be future, two-fifths of which has already passed.