In a sweeping step to support Asian cinema… ChanelThe Hong Kong Culture Fund is creating buzz across Hong Kong and Thailand, uniting an Oscar winner Tilda Swinton He received the Palme d’Or Apichatpong Weerasethakul For historical cooperation.
In Hong Kong, the initiative includes Chanel’s partnership with the M+ Museum which is leading a restoration program under the direction of Silke Schmeichel, Chanel’s Chief Curator of the Moving Image, who will oversee the M+ Moving Image Centre’s collections, commissions and curatorial programmes. The project will restore nine Hong Kong New Wave films, with three of them premiering at major international festivals in 2025: Tang Shouchuin’s The Arc (1968), Peter Yeung’s The System (1979), and Patrick Tamm’s “Love Massacre” (1979). 1981).
“It always occurs to me that there’s no such thing as an old film, because what cinema is is the present, so you can look at a film made in 1923, and you’re there, and you can imagine a film that will be made in a hundred years,” Swinton said of film preservation. And you’ll be there then.” “And there’s also no such thing as a new movie because all the movies you’ve seen before are from a younger generation only. So it’s a real distillation of the present. So the idea of film preservation is built into the model.
Veteran Hong Kong director Tang Shouchuen stressed the universal appeal of cinema: “Cinema is a window into the human condition, so it is a very powerful medium.”
Chanel Cultural Fund Initiatives, led by Global Head of Arts and Culture Jana Bell, will premiere Weerasethakul’s “A Conversation with the Sun (VR),” featuring a score by the late Ryuichi Sakamoto and visuals by Katsuya Taniguchi, at the exhibition. Bangkok Experimental Film Festival.
The distinguished Thai director reflected on his cultural roots: “My Asian cinema and our lives have always been about ghosts – traces of history, light, and things left unsaid. A Conversation with the Sun (VR) is part of that lineage, but in a different way. Cinema Without a Screen, Where the Sun Itself Becomes an Object of Contemplation Bringing this work to the Bangkok Experimental Film Festival is important because this city, this region, recognizes impermanence. Light moves, bodies disappear, and memories dissolve always.”
The initiative includes M+ Rediscoveries, a recurring series showcasing restored classics and experimental cinema by emerging Asian artists, along with Avant-Garde Now, which features prominent video artists and experimental filmmakers across Asia. The French fashion powerhouse also supports the Asian Avant-Garde Film Festival and creates a comprehensive film distribution library.
The Bangkok collaboration also includes “Encounter: The Last Thing I Saw That Felt Like a Film,” a lecture performance featuring Swinton and Weerasethakul in conversation, moderated by Kong Rithdi, that blends sound, light and film in an exploration of memory and memory. imagine.
“It is a great pleasure and honor to highlight the region’s central importance to cinema and moving images, across its analogue history and digital future,” Bell said.
