Restored Classics
As the film-restoration movement reaches ever-greater highs, it’s easy to take for granted today’s access to classics in faultlessly cleaned-up copies. Long gone are the days when scarred prints and fuzzy VHS copies held primacy for film freaks trying to fill gaps in filmographies. Festival sidebars, the swelling catalogues of Blu-ray labels and the flows of streaming picks are instead making it easy to catch masterworks and cult favourites alike in digitally renewed glory. Udine Far East Film Festival for its part is continuing to fire up the projectors to showcase premier restorations and help audiences savour the films’ big-screen experience.
This year’s Restored Classics section is showcasing nine restorations, among them four world premieres from the Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Institute (TFAI). Over the past decade the TFAI, dedicated to preserving Taiwan screen heritage, has been boosting its efforts in digital restoration. The institute started acquiring the necessary hardware and software in 2015, and it now has high-end 4K film scanners at its disposal.
Acclaimed Taiwan director Pai Ching-jui (1931-1997) is the subject of a three-film tribute within the Udine sidebar. The first person to leave Taiwan to study film in Italy, having enrolled at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome, Pai was deeply influenced by Italian Neorealism and made his solo directing debut with Lonely Seventeen (1967). The exquisitely shot tale of thwarted romance and mental illness, now restored in 2K, picked up six Golden Horse Awards including Best Director. Also screening are the 2K restorations of Pai’s comedy Accidental Trio (1969) and drama Good Bye! Darling (1970), both long out of print and now little seen. Each one of the restorations was handled by the TFAI, and all are having their world premieres in Udine.
Pai served as producer of The Story of a Small Town (1979), helmed by Lee Hsing – the director in focus under last year’s Restored Classics. That film too is screening in Udine as a restored-version world premiere, with the new copy coming from the TFAI’s in-house 2K restoration project. The cleanup brings fresh life to Lee’s tale of an ex-prisoner making a new life in the township of Sanyi and falling in love with a mute girl.
At its most exciting, the film-restoration drive is bringing key films out of vaults and back into the public sphere. Consider the reach of revered Filipino director Lino Brocka’s Bona (1980) over the past year as it made its way through festival showings and theatrical runs. Though long spoken of as a masterpiece by Brocka (Manila in the Claws of Light) since its 1981 Cannes Directors’ Fortnight screening, the film had dropped from circulation after cinema release – some even considered it lost. After the original 35mm film and sound negatives were unearthed in France, distributors Kani Releasing and Carlotta Films secured rights from star and producer Nora Aunor. Restoration was carried out in 4K at the Cité de Mémoire lab in Paris, with audio restoration carried out by L.E. Diapason. Since the stabilised and cleaned-up version premiered last May in Cannes, the film has had releases in France and North America, and is now a key attraction in festival lineups.
Another film with dramatically improved reach is Tsui Hark’s comedy Shanghai Blues (1984). The film is notable as much for its dizzying delights as it is for being the first release from powerhouse Hong Kong production company Film Workshop. To celebrate Shanghai Blues’ 40th anniversary, Film Workshop had the film undergo 4K restoration by the Bologna-headquartered L’Immagine Ritrovata and a sound remix by Hong Kong’s One Cool Production, all under the supervision of Tsui and Film Workshop co-founder Nansun Shi. But more than returning the visuals to their gorgeous original form, the project took a special turn as new audio was inserted with region-accurate Cantonese, Shanghainese and Mandarin tracks to replace the original blanket use of Cantonese. A premiere in Cannes got the restored picture back to screen, and since then festivals including this year’s Far East Film are helping cinephiles appreciate the film’s wonders.
One can hope for a similar audience boost for Hong Kong crime drama The System (1979). The debut narrative feature of Peter Yung about cops chasing drug traffickers was hailed as a major work of the Hong Kong New Wave yet for decades stayed largely out of view – the self-funded indie film was never released on digital media. Now Hong Kong’s M+ museum of contemporary visual culture has rolled out The System as the first of its M+ Restored titles. Launched as part of a partnership between M+ and Chanel and aiming to “increase visibility of Hong Kong’s rich cinematic heritage”, the M+ Restored initiative has nine feature films picked for restoration. The System was restored in 4K by M+ with digital restoration carried out by L’Immagine Ritrovata and colour correction completed by One Cool Production, and the source materials were the original 35mm picture and sound negatives preserved at the Hong Kong Film Archive. After sellout April shows at the Hong Kong International Film Festival, The System is now making its international premiere in Udine.
Among the more recent works getting restoration are Bong Joon Ho’s South Korean black comedy Barking Dogs Never Bite (2000) and Johnnie To’s Hong Kong police thriller PTU (2003). CJ Entertainment had Barking Dogs Never Bite digitally scanned and colour graded in 4K by the Korean Film Archive in 2024, under the supervision of the Oscar-winning director. Source materials for the restoration were the 35mm original negative film and digital sound acquired in 2000 and 2018. The story of a jobless academic who abducts a neighbour’s dog underperformed on initial theatrical release, but it has built a cult following since. With the newly restored version now available – and making its European bow in Udine – the film is ripe for reappraisal.
PTU has found its way back to movie halls with a 4K restoration by iST in Hong Kong. iST is the post-production division of producer and rights owner Mei Ah Entertainment; its restoration of Patrick Tam’s Nomad (1982) played Far East Film in 2023. To’s tense and stylish noir, about a police team secretly trying to find a colleague’s missing revolver, had a less-than-ideal theatrical release (it came out during the SARS epidemic) but it’s ready to hit theatres once more and subvert expectations of the Hong Kong policier. After sold-out Hong Kong screenings in April, the film is now returning to Udine for the restoration’s European premiere. Even if films like PTU and Barking Dogs Never Bite have managed to get widely distributed on home video, their high-resolution restorations now give us the perfect opportunity to witness the filmmakers’ craftsmanship and vision as intended in the cinema.
Tim Youngs