Digital Restoration: 5-Day Film Restoration Workshop In Myanmar

The opening ceremony of film restoration workshop in Myanmar was held at Film Development Centre in Yangon on Monday.

Along with the enhancement of cultural exchange between Myanmar and Japan, Japanese Agency for Cultural Affairs organized the workshop in collaboration with IMAGICA Lab, Save Myanmar Film and other organizations.

The workshop aims for Myanmar people to receive the technologies of digital film restoration.

Coordinator, IMAGICA Lab, Satoko Sekiguchi said “Using our knowledge and skills, we would like to contribute to archives of the Myanmar films…….in the practice, we restore a part of “Winter in my Heart” film and we restore the great film together with Myanmar students and Japanese lecturers. So, it is the main point.”

Making Films has started in Myanmar in 1918, and 99% of original film reels have been lost and decayed at present.

Save Myanmar Film Project started in 2017 with the aim of saving decayed and about-to-die films in Myanmar. The very first restoration work has been done for Japan Yin Thwe (Japanese Offspring) film which is one of the most famous films by Director U Nyi Pu.

Project Director, Save Myanmar Film, Okkar said “This is a workshop to train how we restore the films by digitalizing, how we measure and control the color balance of the films. During the workshop, we are going to make restoration and preserving processes together for 2 minutes long film track of digital scanned 35 mm color film “Winter from My Heart”. The films are easy to decay and they are very important for movie industry and for the country. We need to preserve them.”

14 participants joined the first day of the film restoration workshop, which is going to run from 24th to 28th of February.