If you aren’t a cinephile with a large knowledge of international films, you may not be familiar with the work of Wong Kar-Wai. Over his illustrious 30+ year career in filmmaking, the writer-director has worked on 10 feature films, and is probably best known for his informal series of films that includes “Days of Being Wild,” “In the Mood for Love,” “2046,” and the upcoming “Blossoms.”
However, if you’re waiting for the right time to jump into Wong’s filmography, perhaps next year will be your time. Because according to the filmmaker, every one of his features is getting a brand-new 4K restoration in 2020.
Speaking to Filmmaker Magazine, while attending the Hawaii International Film Festival, the acclaimed director talked about the undertaking and how it came to be. And funny enough, it appears that Wong wasn’t necessarily excited about revisiting his work.
“I try not to. I was forced to!” Wong said, jokingly. “We’ve been working on these restorations for a long time. Next year is the 20th anniversary of ‘In the Mood For Love,’ and around the world, there will be retrospectives and reissues of the film, along with the other films.”
He continued, “A few years ago I watched my film somewhere, looked at the monitor, and said, ‘Why does it look so messy?’ They said, ‘Now we are used to 4K projections, so you have to upgrade it, otherwise you will have those kind of feelings.’ We have been working on it. Last year in Lyon, we showed the restored films in front of 5000[-person] audiences, and it looked very, very good. The problem is that it’s like opening a Pandora’s box, because you will never feel like it is good enough. You say, ‘It looked better before,’ or ‘The color is not right,’ etc. It brings up a lot of pains.”
There are no formal announcements about when and where you’ll be able to catch these new restorations. The report says that they will be part of a tour that will be traveling around, which will presumably offer its own sort of Wong-centered film festival. If you live outside of the US, the director’s own studio, Jet Tone Films, will be responsible for releasing the new restorations, while Janus/Criterion have the rights in the US.
Obviously, when details are released, we’ll bring them to you right away.