Since the establishment of the "4K Restoration" unit in 2014, the Shanghai International Film Festival has screened a number of restored films from all over the world every year. This year marks the 10th anniversary of the "4K Restoration" unit of the Shanghai Film Festival. The 4K restored versions of classic Hong Kong films "Swordsman", "Hard Boiled", "Project A" and "Once Upon a Time in China" have been selected for the official screening unit. Each work will be screened five times in Shanghai cinemas. Among them, the newly restored 4K versions of "Swordsman" and "Hard Boiled" are the world premieres.

The world premiere of the 4K restored version of "Swordsman"

The 4K versions of "Swordsman", "The Killer", "Project A" and "Once Upon a Time in China" were restored by the "Classic Hong Kong Film Restoration Project" jointly initiated by the China Film Archive, TikTok and Volcano Engine. Many films restored by the project were screened at the Beijing Film Festival and the Cannes Film Festival in April and May this year.

This year marks the 100th anniversary of Jin Yong's birth. The 4K restored version of "The Smiling, Proud Wanderer", adapted from his masterpiece, was selected for the "Tribute to the Master" section.

At 1 pm on June 19, the world premiere of the 4K restored version of "Swordsman" was screened at Shanghai Peace Cinema. After the show, a young audience member said that the viewing effect after 4K restoration was close to that of a new film, "When I watched it, I completely forgot that it was a restored version. It had the same visual effect as other new films at the Shanghai Film Festival that I watched two days ago." Another college student audience member born in 2005 watched the film with her mother. After the screening, she said that these old films are a review for the parents' generation, and a brand new experience for the post-00s who like martial arts films but have not had the opportunity to watch them seriously in theaters.

Young fans wait for the 4K version of "Swordsman" to premiere worldwide

The other three films, "A Better Tomorrow", "Project A" and "Once Upon a Time in China", were selected as representatives of domestic classic films in the "4K Restoration" section of the Shanghai Film Festival. This year marks the 10th anniversary of the "4K Restoration" section, which is dedicated to showing the latest achievements of world film restoration to Chinese audiences.

"I always rush to watch the 4K films at the Shanghai Film Festival every year. Last year I watched the restored version of "The Godfather", and this year I rushed to watch old Hong Kong films. The picture details are very realistic, like every micro-expression of the characters is very obvious. The color ratio is not exaggerated like some restored films. It still feels like watching an old movie." A young audience said after the screening of "Hard Boiled".

Four 4K restored classic Hong Kong films screened at this year's Shanghai Film Festival

These classic films, which have been precipitated by time, carry the common memories of several generations. This screening at the Shanghai Film Festival will allow young audiences to appreciate the charm of classic light and shadow again. "Restoring a film has the same important cultural rescue value as restoring a cultural relic by the Palace Museum or a mural in the Mogao Grottoes in Dunhuang." Sun Xianghui, director of the China Film Archive and director of the China Film Art Research Center, said that film restoration is an important measure to protect film heritage and has the value of protecting classics and cultural inheritance.

According to reports, the origin of the "Classic Hong Kong Film Restoration Project" is that Douyin found that many old films are becoming popular again through the "secondary creation" interpretation of film and television creators. In the past year, classic Hong Kong films accounted for 30% of the top short videos in the "secondary creation" category on Douyin. Among the users who watched these short videos, more than half were under 30 years old, and many young people were "planted" to watch the original films.

In order to meet the audio-visual requirements of current audiences and bring a better viewing experience, in August 2023, the China Film Archive, Douyin, and Volcano Engine jointly launched the "Classic Hong Kong Film Restoration Plan", announcing plans to restore 100 classic Hong Kong films, and select 10 of them to be restored frame by frame by "manual + AI", and the remaining 90 will be mainly restored using AI technology.

Wang Zheng, a restorer at the China Film Archive, participated in the restoration. He said that in the past, film restoration was mainly based on the 2K standard. Under the computing power and equipment conditions at the time, it often took half a year to a year to restore a 4K film. After the introduction of AI technology, it only takes one month to restore a 4K film.

In this restoration project, Volcano Engine applied AIGC visual large model technology to the old movie restoration scene for the first time, which can quickly solve the problems of clarity, smoothness, and color distortion of old films, help restorers reduce repetitive work, and allow restorers to focus on dealing with more complex details, greatly improving the overall restoration efficiency.

Comparison of "Swordsman" before and after restoration, the right is after 4K restoration

However, in film restoration, the artistic effect of the film still relies on "human feelings" to control it. Wang Zheng shared that the two recently restored films, "Swordsman" and "A Better Tomorrow", were shot around 1990. Compared with earlier films, there are not many defects in the pictures. The most difficult thing is how to "restore the old as it was" in terms of color. The team of restorers referred to and compared many contemporary films, repeatedly adjusted the unique sense of age of Hong Kong films, and invited the film's creators to come into the restoration room for guidance, trying to make the restoration effect conform to the subjective aesthetics and the emotional intentions of the creators.

The combination of manual restoration and technical restoration allows moviegoers to "reunite" with the old movies. In addition to watching old films on the big screen at the film festival, the restored films of the "Classic Hong Kong Film Restoration Project" can also be watched for free on Douyin and Xigua Video.