Screening Details

 
 
Archival Gems-Time After Time
 
2020.7.5 - 2021.3.28
Cinema, Hong Kong Film Archive
 
 

Safeguarding the heritage of our cinema has always been the mission of the Hong Kong Film Archive. Through continuous efforts in acquisition over the years, we have been going after every clue, working hard to fill the many gaps in our film history.

Acquisition work is like searching for missing pieces of a puzzle, hoping to discover films that have been lost or unearth gems that have long been buried, and reconnecting them with the world of light and shadow. With the support of $20 million allocated to the Archive in the financial year 2019-20, the Archive embarked on a 5-year digitisation project to transfer 150 invaluable films in its collection to the latest DCP digital format. The original celluloid films are either sole existing copies or prints in unsatisfactory conditions. Digitising them will minimise the risk of further damage to the celluloid when used for projection.

Film archives around the world are forever seeking a balance between preserving their collections and sharing them with the public. Here in Hong Kong, we have been hindered from introducing parts of our collection to the audience due to different levels of print rarity and damage to the copies. This digitisation project will bring back to the screen some of those films, presented as the programme ‘Archival Gems–Time After Time', one of many events celebrating the 20th Anniversary of the Hong Kong Film Archive. 16 of those films that are either digitised from sole-print copies or never-before-screened versions of movies from 1940s to 1960s will first be showcased. Each one of them is a time capsule that retained the sights and sounds of the past.

We cannot travel back in time. Yet we can always sit back in a darkened theatre and experience the unfolding of stories, sharing laughter and tears the way audiences did in the past.