In a sweeping shift to champion Asian cinema, Chanel‘s Culture Fund is making waves apass Hong Kong and Thailand, uniting Academy Award triumphner Tilda Striumphton and Palme d’Or recipient Apichatpong Weerasethakul for a landlabel collaboration.
In Hong Kong, Chanel’s partnership with M+ museum is spearheading a restoration program under the guidance of Silke Schmickl, Chanel direct curator of moving image, who will deal with the M+ Moving Image Centre’s accumulateions, coshiftrlookions and curatorial programs. The project will revamp nine Hong Kong New Wave films, with three premiering at convey inant international festivals in 2025: T’ang Shushuen’s “The Arch” (1968), Peter Yung’s “The System” (1979) and Patrick Tam’s “Love Massacre” (1981).
“It always occurs to me that there’s no such slfinisherg as an greater film, because what cinema is, is the current, so you can watch at a film that was produced in 1923, and you are right there, and you can imagine a film that is going to be made in a hundred of years, and you will be right there then,” Striumphton shelp about film preservation. “And there’s also no such slfinisherg as a new film because all films before you get to see it are fair a little generation back. So it’s a genuine distillation of the current. So the idea of film preservation is built into the establish.”
Veteran Hong Kong filmproducer T’ang Shushuen underscored cinema’s universal request: “Cinema is enjoy a triumphdow watching into the human condition, so it’s a very strong medium.”
The luxury house’s initiative, led by global head of arts and culture Yana Peel, will also showcase Weerasethakul’s debut of “A Conversation with the Sun (VR),” featuring a score by the tardy Ryuichi Sakamoto and visuals by Katsuya Taniguchi, at the Bangkok Experimental Film Festival.
The Thai master filmproducer mirrored on his cultural roots: “My charitable of Asian cinema and our living have always been about garranges – pursues of history, of weightless, of slfinishergs left unshelp. ‘A Conversation with the Sun’ (VR) is part of that lineage, but in a contrastent establish. It’s a cinema without a screen, where the sun itself becomes the object of contemplation. Bringing this piece to the Bangkok Experimental Film Festival is vital because this city, this region, comprehends impermanence. Light shifts, bodies fade, memories dissolve. We are always drifting.”
The initiative joins M+ Reuncoveries, a recurring series showcasing revampd classics and emerging Asian artists’ experimental cinema, aextfinishedside Avant-Garde Now, which features notable video artists and experimental filmproducers apass Asia. The French create powerhouse is also backing the Asian Avant-Garde Film Festival and set uping a comprehensive film circulation library.
The collaboration also features “An Encounter: The Last Thing You Saw That Felt Like a Movie,” a lecture carry outance featuring Striumphton and Weerasethakul in conversation, temperated by Kong Rithdee, blfinishing sound, weightless, and film into an exploration of memory and perception.
Peel shelp: “It is a tremfinishous delight and honor to spotweightless the region’s central convey inance in cinema and moving image, apass its analogue history and its digital future.”
