Tilda Swinton, Apichatpong Weerasethakul Join Forces for Chanel’s Asian Cinema Initiative

variety.com:

Naman Ramachandran In a sweeping move to champion Asian cinema, Chanel‘s Culture Fund is making waves across Hong Kong and Thailand, uniting Academy Award winner Tilda Swinton and Palme d’Or recipient Apichatpong Weerasethakul for a landmark collaboration.

In Hong Kong, Chanel’s partnership with M+ museum is spearheading a restoration program under the guidance of Silke Schmickl, Chanel lead curator of moving image, who will oversee the M+ Moving Image Centre’s collections, commissions and curatorial programs.

The project will restore nine Hong Kong New Wave films, with three premiering at major 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 thing as an old film, because what cinema is, is the present, so you can look at a film that was created 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,” Swinton said about film preservation. “And there’s also no such thing as a new film because all films before you get to see it are just a little generation back.