The Taiwan Film Institute (TFI) entrusted IMAGICA Lab. Inc. (CEO: Katsumi Obayashi, Located in Shinagawa, Tokyo) with 2K restoration work for three films including Play While You Play (1981, Taiwan) directed by Hou Hsiao-hsien. (See below for more information on the works)
As a part of that project, IMAGICA Lab. welcomed five TFI staff to their Tokyo Imaging Center (Oct. 22 – 24) and Osaka Production Center (Oct. 18) and held a digital restoration training program for four days in total. IMAGICA Lab. staff became instructors in the program, having basic seminars on film archiving, showing film processing machines, giving tours around the facility, and demonstrating the workflow including film repairing, scanning, digital restoration, and color grading.
The training was a valuable experience for our company, allowing us to pass down our techniques, train human resources, and learn about the film archiving scene in Taiwan through an international cultural exchange like this one. We believe that we are able to contribute to the establishment of a sustainable Asian and international film archiving community.
IMAGICA Lab. was established upon a merger of three companies (IMAGICA Corp., IMAGICA WEST Corp., IMAGICA Imageworks, Inc.) on October 1st. We hope to do our best as an “image communication company” by providing training programs like this one for film restoration in order to share our techniques not only within Japan but also in other parts of Asia.
Play While You Play (directed by Hou Hsiao-hsien, 91 mins, 1981)
https://toolkit.culture.tw/en/filminfo_62_183.html
Bride Who Has Returned from Hell (directed by Hsin Chi, 117 mins, 1965)
https://toolkit.culture.tw/en/filminfo_62_463.html
Unforgettable Train Station (directed by Hsin Chi, 111 mins, 1965)