After the Macau International Comedy Festival was held for the first time last year, the event will have its second edition this year, which will be held for five days next month, with comedies and other related activities to be held in Macau and Hengqin.
The 2nd Macau International Comedy Festival will be jointly organised by mainland-based comedy production company Mahua FunAge and cultural communication company Damai, both headquartered in Beijing, with the Macau government’s Cultural Affairs Bureau (IC), as well as two companies, Hengqin In-depth Cooperation Investment Group and Nam Kwong Culture and Creativity Industry Company Limited, as co-organisers.
A press conference about this year’s festival was held at the Macau Cultural Centre (CCM) in Nape yesterday.
The upcoming festival will be held between April 9 and 13, with comedies, film screenings, forums, workshops and other related activities to be held in cultural facilities in Macau including those run by three gaming operators, MGM, Sands China, and Melco, as well as in Hengqin.
Last year, the festival was held for eight days in March.
IC President Deland Leong Wai Man said during yesterday’s press conference that the continuous organisation of the Macau International Comedy Festival will “vigorously” promote the integrated development of Macau’s cultural and creative industries with other related fields, creating another unique cultural brand for Macau.
Leong expressed her gratitude to Beijing-based Mahua FunAge for again staging fun events for people in Macau and Hengqin as well as those elsewhere in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area (GBA) by staging comedies next month.
Pledging that her bureau will continue to strongly support the organisation of the Macau International Comedy Festival, Leong also said she expects Macau’s status as a 2025 Culture City of East Asia to be able to attract more high-quality cultural projects to Macau, developing the city into an important bridge for the nation’s high-standard opening-up as well as an important window of exchanges between Chinese and Western civilisations.
Mahua FunAge CEO Han Mei acknowledged during yesterday’s press conference that there is a lack of Chinese-language comedy playwrights because of which this time her company was calling for submissions of new works by comedy playwrights from the Chinese-speaking world.
About 300 comedy works were submitted, including those from Macau, of which six pieces were shortlisted earlier this year, including one from Macau.
Mahua FunAge Chief Financial Officer Cheng Leer said that the six shortlisted comedy works will be presented and assessed during a session which will be one of the activities in next month’s comedy festival, when three winners will be chosen. The three chosen comedies will be staged during the next, third comedy festival.
Guan Xiaojing, a manager of Hengqin In-depth Cooperation Investment Group, said during yesterday’s press conference that she expects the Macau International Comedy Festival to create opportunities encouraging more high-quality cultural projects from elsewhere to be launched in Hengqin, transforming Hengqin into a new international cultural hub.
Guests such as Cultural Affairs Bureau (IC) President Deland Leong Wai Man (sixth from left), Mahua FunAge CEO Han Mei (sixth from right), and Guan Xiaojing (first from right), a manager of Hengqin In-depth Cooperation Investment Group, symbolically launch the 2nd Macau International Comedy Festival during yesterday’s press conference. – Photo: Tony Wong
