... and the prize for this year's most stylish opening scene goes to: 'The Last Time I Saw Macao', where a sexy drag queen in a close-fitting silk dress mimes through the B-movie icon Jane Russell's 'You Kill Me' in front of a cage full of tigers. This is only the beginnging of a semi-documentary meta-noir, whose labyrinthine story unfolds in the neon-lit underworld of the former Portuguese colony Macao. Here, Joao Rui Guerra da Mata grew up, and he now returns to the city on a double mission: to save his transgender friend Cindy, who has become embroiled in a mysterious and deadly affair, and to make one of the most distinctive and innovative essay films of recent times together with his partner Joao Pedro Rodrigues. A film that reflects on Macao's colonial past as both a real place, and as a mythical canvas on which the West - with the film medium as an intermediary - has projected its fantasies about the temptations and dangers of the exotic East. And the director duo's joint project is just that: a film in the stylised tradition of Jacques Tourneur and Josef von Sternberg, whose B-movie 'Macao' (1952) provides the source of inspiration - and a melancholy loss of illusion. Docu-purists looking for the 'real' Macao are kindly referred to Rodrigues and da Matas's short film 'Alvorada Vermelha', which could be seen at last year's CPH:DOX.

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