Conservation and Restoration
The Hong Kong Film Archive embrace the important responsibility of conserving and restoring films and related materials. We strive to extend the longevity of film-based materials through scientific methods so much so that precious old Hong Kong films can be preserved for future generations. The beginning of our film restoration work can be traced back to 1995. From the planning period to the early years of the Archive's establishment, we used optical restoration to transfer unsatisfactory/unstable images and soundtracks to a new film, and to a limited extent, improved problems such as colour fading, overly high contrasts and film scratches by making use of dark room techniques. With the advent of technology, digital restoration can now greatly improve image and sound quality, reducing flickering and jittering, scratches and stains, correcting density and colour tones, and removing unwanted noises on the soundtrack. The Archive has so far restored over 40 motion pictures, among which 11 were restored digitally, including The Secret (1979), Butterfly and Red Pear Blossom (1959), and the current project, martial arts classic The Valiant Ones (1975).
