"Ashes and Time" is a 1994 movie directed by Wong Kar-wai starring Leslie Cheung, Brigitte Lin, Tony Leung, Maggie Cheung and several other famous Hong Kong stars. The movie was a blockbuster that won many awards, not to mention its huge box office success.
14 years later in 2008, the movie was reedited and re-released under the title "Ashes of Time Redux". Surprisingly, the digitally restored edition earned 34 million yuan. Likewise, the classic "New Dragon Inn" which cost 2 million yuan to digitally restore has made 5 million yuan at the box office.
Sun Xianghui, the associate curator of the China Film Archive, says that it is a popular trend to revive classics like this.
"People are willing to watch classics such as the 'New Dragon Inn', so these movies still have market value."
Qian Jianping, the head of Shanghai Animation Film Studio, states that nostalgia drives this trend rather than people interested in the new visual and sound effects.
"The success of a revived movie depends on several factors such as its previous box office power and its ability to catch the eye. Without these factors, restored movies may fail even though they are classics."
Industry insiders state that movie restoration is an open ended project. The better the graphics, the more you spend. It cost one hundred million yuan to make the upcoming Titanic into a 3D movie.
Tang Lina is the assistant secretary general of the Shanghai International Film Festival. She says that China shot more than 400 movies before 1949, but these precious classics interest few producers.
"The capital for China's movie restorations is very limited. The money mainly comes from the government. In foreign countries, various foundations participate in this work as well as some entrepreneurs."
On top of this, China lacks restoration experts. Most domestic classic films are revived by foreign companies. Curator Sun Xianghui says that there is still a long way to go before China catches up to the rest of the world in this area.
"The problem is that the technicians don't have movie knowledge, and the accomplished moviemakers are not good at these techniques. If the technicians don't know much about the actors and actresses, the background information and the social environment at the time they may have problems with restoration."
For CRI, I'm Wang Xiao.
