Location: M+ Cinema, House 1

What’s old is new, and what’s new is old in cinemas around the world. The first runs of some of the most anticipated titles in contemporary filmgoing may have already been widely enjoyed at a different time in history, with many of these films being decades older than the audiences who are now queuing up to watch them. The noticeable increase of filmgoers who are interested in revival, repertory, and restored cinemas has given a much-needed boost to independently operated venues, arthouse theatres, and longstanding film festivals around the world, feeding into a renewed and vibrant ecology in film restoration, distribution, exhibition, curating, and criticism.

Notions and terms such as aspect ratios, materiality, film grain, and Blu-ray versus streaming release, and anecdotal narratives about the experience of watching a film in a specific projection and social environment, are now part of an evolving vernacular with vital cultural currency. Beyond reiterations and expansions of mere nostalgia, there are new forces and conditions shaping the writing of a future film history—one driven by the quality of presentations as much as the conversations around rarity, access, and the perception of cultural experiences.

This panel discussion addresses the energies around the (re)emergence of revival, repertory, and restored cinema cultures and invites industry experts from film festivals, cinemas, institutions, distribution companies, and other spaces to share how they unfold in relation to their projects, locales, and experiences. Alongside ‘Behind the Restoration: What Makes Restorations Technically Challenging?’, as part of the M+ Restored Festival 2026, this conversation further situates the efforts of the M+ Restored project within a broader context of what has now become a global cultural phenomenon.

This talk is hosted by Chanel Kong, M+ Curator of Moving Image, in English.

Edo Choi is a film programmer, critic, and projectionist based in New York City. Currently Film Programmer at Metrograph, he was formerly Associate Curator of Film at Museum of the Moving Image in Queens and programming manager at the Maysles Documentary Center in Harlem. He has organised retrospectives on Boris Barnet, Agnieszka Holland, Manfred Kirchheimer, Otar Iosseliani, Clara Law, Terrence Malick, Mikio Naruse, Max Ophuls, Frank Oz, Glauber Rocha, Don Siegel, and Hiroshi Shimizu. He has contributed writing in print and online to Cine-File Chicago, Documentary Magazine, Film Comment, Metrograph Journal, and Reverse Shot.

Named ‘kani’ after Yasujiro Ozu’s custom, crab-like camera tripod, Kani Releasing is a boutique film distributor dedicated to furthering the availability of Asian cinema in North America. Founded by Pearl Chan (Managing Director) and Ariel Esteban Cayer (Artistic Director), Kani aims to expand the canon, support up-and-coming filmmakers, and reintroduce repertory classics. Their recent releases include My Heart is That Eternal Rose (1989) by Patrick Tam, Batang West Side (2001) by Lav Diaz, Bye Bye Love (1974) by Isao Fujisawa, Bona (1980) by Lino Brocka, and My Name Ain’t Suzie (1985) by Angie Chen.

Ehsan Khoshbakht is a film curator, writer, and filmmaker. He co-directs Il Cinema Ritrovato, the annual festival of film history and restoration in Bologna, Italy, and has curated the retrospective section of the Locarno Film Festival since 2024. An architect by training, his programmes have been presented at the Museum of Modern Art, the Harvard Film Archive, the Academy Museum, BFI Southbank, and the Cinémathèque française, as well as many other venues worldwide. He has authored and edited a dozen books on cinema, including Lady with the Torch: Columbia Pictures 1929–1959 (2024), Travels in the Cities of Cinema: Conversations with Jonathan Rosenbaum (2025), and Red & Black: Hollywood Left and The Blacklist (2026). His documentaries include Filmfarsi (2019) and Celluloid Underground (2023).

Kong Rithdee is widely regarded as Thailand’s foremost film critic, having contributed to the Bangkok Post and numerous other publications for more than twenty years. He is also an accomplished filmmaker in his own right, with writing and directing credits that include Baby Arabia (2010), The Island Funeral (2015), and The Cursed Land (2024). A dedicated advocate for film preservation, he served as deputy director of the Thai Film Archive, the country’s state-funded custodian of Thailand’s cinematic heritage. In recognition of his contributions to cinema, the French government has honoured him as a Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (Knight in the Order of Arts and Letters).

Location: M+ Cinema, House 1

Film restoration is more complex than you might think. It’s not only about fixing the picture, sweetening the audio, and simply bringing a film back to the screen. In practice, it is a complex, layered process involving everything from selecting the right materials, restoring the image and sound, and performing colour correction, to ultimately recreating the film’s aesthetic intent at the time it was first released.

Restoration projects are filled with crucial decisions that, depending on multiple factors and based on the nature of the project, inevitably require trade-offs. Whether a film has deteriorated and survives only in incomplete form—resulting in chemical decay, brittleness, or moulding due to aging and poor storage conditions—or whether technical and distribution limitations prevented the filmmaker from achieving the intended results at the time the film was shot, the project stakeholders (curators, filmmakers, and restoration teams) must make careful, often highly subjective judgments in their effort to represent how the film looked at the time of its release.

This panel discussion brings together the film restoration teams responsible for The Butterfly Murders, Homecoming, and Durian Durian. As leading experts in the field of film restoration, they will share details of their restoration journey in our projects, and discuss the potential gains and controversies surrounding the use of advance technology and programming in film restoration.

This talk is hosted by Chanel Kong, M+ Curator of Moving Image, in English.

Imagica Entertainment Media Services was founded in 1935. Its predecessor, Far East Laboratory Ltd., was Japan’s first commercial film processing and developing laboratory equipped with an automated film-processing machine. Later, it relocated to Tokyo and was renamed the Tokyo Laboratory. Over the years, the company has continued to lead technological developments in Japanese film production and restoration. Its in-house film restoration team is responsible for the restoration of The Butterfly Murders. Imagica’s Archiving and Restoration Coordinator, Riko Fujiwara, will introduce the process of using innovative and distinctive technologies to address severe damage to the film and to treat cases of mould infestation.

Silver Salt Restoration is a leading film restoration organisation in the UK. It has worked on the restoration of archival footage for the documentary The Beatles: Get Back (2021), as well as on the British Film Institute’s large-scale restoration project The Hitchcock 9 (1925–1929). Following its work on The Arch, Silver Salt Restoration again took an M+ Restored project—Homecoming. With parts of the original negatives having deteriorated beyond full recovery, different generations of film elements were used in the restoration and reconstruction process.

L’Immagine Ritrovata, based in Bologna, Italy, has been dedicated to advancing global film restoration work since its founding in 1992. Its restoration workflow spans everything from photochemical restoration to 4K digital restoration, making it an international benchmark. It is also one of the earliest organisations to promote film restoration in Hong Kong. The M+ Restored films it has worked on include The System, Just Like Weather, Cageman, and Durian Durian. In each case, the original negatives were damaged to varying degrees and involved multiple types of film elements, making the reconstruction and restoration process especially challenging.

Location: M+ Cinema, House 2

The history of film has spanned over 130 years. As a medium for creation and a carrier of images, it continues to be an important and well-recognised methodology for production, projection, and preservation and is used in a variety of ways in many industries and artistic fields. This workshop will showcase film formats used in modern cinema, including professional 35mm and amateur 8mm films. Participants will engage interactively to learn about the history of film invention and projection, as well as enjoy a screening of 16mm film.

This workshop is for participants aged 16 or above.