Best Archive Restoration & Preservation Project or Title

2022 Winner

Celestial's Shaw Brothers Collection Project

Production Company:: L'Immagine Ritrovata SRL

Synopsis

Arrow Video released a Blu-ray Collection called ShawScope Volume One and Two which includes classic Kung Fu movies.

The restored films are released within the 1970s and the 1980s, kicking off in 1972 with Korean director Jeong Chang-hwa’s King Boxer, the film that established kung fu cinema as an international box office powerhouse when it hit Stateside cinemas under the title Five Fingers of Death. Chang Cheh (arguably Shaw’s most prolific director) helm the blood-soaked brutality of The Boxer from Shantung and two self-produced films in his ‘Shaolin Cycle’ series, Five Shaolin Masters and its prequel Shaolin Temple, before taking a detour into Ho Meng Hua’s King Kong-inspired Mighty Peking Man, one of the most unmissably insane giant monster films ever made. Chang’s action choreographer Lau Kar-leung then becomes a director in his own right, propelling his adoptive brother Gordon Liu to stardom in Challenge of the Masters and Executioners from Shaolin.

Archival highlights

All the materials were digitized 2K and restored in 2K.

Each film restored was sourced from the original camera negatives held at the National Film Archive in Hong Kong. The soundtracks were sourced from the original sound negatives (the vast majority of these titles included soundtracks recorded for Mandarin, Cantonese, and English), with separate main and end title picture sections for each, altogether a lot of material to assemble and keep track of.

The restoration was made by L'Immagine Ritrovata laboratory in Hong Kong and Bologna. The restoration of this project took 2 years.

Shortlisted

L’Avventura

Production Company:: Cinematographique Lyre

Synopsis

Michelangelo Antonioni broke many codes and invented a new film grammar with L’AVVENTURA, which is today recognised as a masterpiece worldwide. Presented at the height of European cinema’s « golden age », it was, and still is, a very provocative and iconic film.

Its gripping and unconventional narrative revolves around the enigmatic disappearance of a young woman (Lea Massari) during a yachting trip off the coast of Sicily and the search that ensues, which throws together her fiancé, a failed architect (Gabriele Ferzetti) and her best friend (Monica Vitti, unforgettable in what is her debut film). From the haunting landscapes of the Aeolian islands to the corridors of the Taormina Domenico hotel, the journey will take them on a gorgeously shot tale of modern ennui and spiritual isolation.

Archival highlights

In our opinion, restoration is as collaborative a work as the original production of a Film may have been. Thus we were very keen and happy to reproduce, with our technical partners, the spirit of collaboration between France and Italy that gave birth to L’AVVENTURA in 1960.

The evolution of technology in the very last few years and the level of expertise reached by each of our technical partners – three of the very best in the world, coming from France and Italy – ensured that the project would result in a truly unique, never-before-seen quality rendition of the full Cannes Version of Antonioni’s work of art.

To this day, L’AVVENTURA remains one of Cinema’s most outstanding films and it is a pleasure to present to all audiences, young and not so young, this 4K restoration which captures like never before the beauty of the images and the haunted quality of the soundtrack.

Sambizanga

Production Company:: L'Immagine Ritrovata

Synopsis

This restoration is part of the African Film Heritage Project, an initiative created by The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project, the Pan African Federation of Filmmakers and UNESCO – in collaboration with Cineteca di Bologna – to help locate, restore, and disseminate African cinema.

Archival highlights

Trapped in a web of legal disputes that made it inaccessible for almost two decades, the restoration of Sambizanga took three years to be completed. During this time we tragically lost Sarah Maldoror, one of the very first woman pioneers in the history of cinema, a poet and a free filmmaker. In the words of her daughter, Annouchka De Andrade :"This film is also the story of a political awakening. The protagonist's continual displacement is also Sarah’s, and it defines women in the African diaspora".

Restoring Sambizanga entailed making sure that the beauty but also the fragility of this film was respected, that the film was not overrestored, that the grading could bring back the lights, the colors and the tragedy of the battle.

Finally, thanks to this restoration project the film was "morally restituted" to Maldoror's and to her audience. And to the audience that will discover her.