Failure, erasure, and oblivion in Joâo Pedro Rodrigues and Joâo Rui Guerra da Mata’s asian trilogy: Red Dawn, The Last Time I Saw Macao, and Iec Long

Suárez, Juan A.

Publication:
Failure, erasure, and oblivion in Joâo Pedro Rodrigues and Joâo Rui Guerra da Mata’s asian trilogy: Red Dawn, The Last Time I Saw Macao, and Iec Long

dc.contributor.author	Suárez, Juan A.
dc.contributor.department	Filología Inglesa
dc.coverage.temporal	siglo XX	es
dc.date.accessioned	2024-02-09T08:39:02Z
dc.date.available	2024-02-09T08:39:02Z
dc.date.copyright	© 2022 editorial matter and organization José Duarte and Filipa Rosário © 2022 the chapters their several authors
dc.date.issued	2022-03-31
dc.description.abstract	João Pedro Rodrigues and João Rui Guerra da Mata’s “Asian Trilogy” comprises the films they co-directed in and about Macao, the former Portuguese enclave in southeast China. The films are relative oddities in the directors’ filmography, especially when contrasted with the flamboyant melodramas that preceded them (Odete [Two Drifters, 2005] and Morrer Como um Homem [To Die Like a Man, 2009]) and the oneiric, spiritual odyssey that followed them (O Ornitólogo [The Ornithologist, 2016]). While Rodrigues is the exclusive director of these better-known feature films, the “Asian films” are joint directorial efforts with Guerra da Mata, Rodrigues’s art designer and occasional co-writer. The existing literature on the trilogy has had surprisingly little to say about the films' queer affect; fails to explore the peculiar reading of contemporary Macao in the films; and passes over its cataclysmic temporality and apocalyptic ending and its related animal subplot. These disparate thematic strands are the main strands pursued in this chapter. They will be explored through the lens of what Judith Halberstam has identified as “the queer art of failure”. Failure in the film – or in Halberstam’s work – is not a trait to be decried; as it blocks the habitual avenues of identification and intelligibility, it promotes alternative paths of desire and cognition. Failure in these films affects personal and collective identity. It plagues the protagonists' lives and defines Macao as a living space that is oppressively fixated on novelty and as the endgame of decolonization and of former emancipatory projects. The Macao of the films is caught in the cyclical temporality of underworld ritual murder, mindless renewal, neo-capitalist spectacle, and gambling. Like its protagonists, Macao has nowhere to go but into the evocation of a past that can only be recreated as a bygone utopia or as a tourist attraction, or into a post-human future where people have vanished and only animals remain. The Last Time I Saw Macao is the central, lengthiest, and most complex piece in the trilogy and its concerns radiate to the other two titles. For this reason, it is the point of entry into the analysis of the three films.	es
dc.format	application/pdf	es
dc.format.extent	21	es
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/10201/139029
dc.language	eng	es
dc.publisher	Edinburgh University Press	es
dc.relation	Proyecto de Investigación del Plan Nacional de Investigación PGC-PGC2018-095393-B-I00 Queer Temporalities in Contemporary Anglophone Cultures. Agencia Nacional de Investigación. Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades.	es
dc.relation.ispartof	ReFocus: The Films of Joao Pedro Rodrigues and Joao Rui Guerra da Mata. Ed.: Edinburgh University Press, pp. 95-115
dc.relation.publisherversion	https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-refocus-the-films-of-joao-pedro-rodrigues-and-joao-rui-guerra-da-mata.html	es
dc.rights	info:eu-repo/semantics/restrictedAccess	es
dc.subject	Joâo Pedro Rodrigues
dc.subject	Joâo Rui Guerra da Mata
dc.subject	Independent cinema
dc.subject	Macao
dc.subject	Failure
dc.subject	Queer temporality
dc.subject	Transnational cinema
dc.title	Failure, erasure, and oblivion in Joâo Pedro Rodrigues and Joâo Rui Guerra da Mata’s asian trilogy: Red Dawn, The Last Time I Saw Macao, and Iec Long	es
dc.type	info:eu-repo/semantics/bookPart	es
dc.type.version	info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
dspace.entity.type	Publication	es
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relation.isAuthorOfPublication.latestForDiscovery	6156d79e-0917-4f7d-9910-fa1058b87508