Since opening in 2008, Cinematheque KOFA has consistently presented Korean films restored and rediscovered by the Korean Film Archive, alongside a wide range of restored works from around the world through its annual Discovery and Restoration program. This year, we once more offer a rich selection of films, some meeting audiences for the first time in decades and others inviting us to revisit them from a fresh perspective.

In an age when countless moving images are rapidly consumed and forgotten, constantly competing for our attention, the experience of immersing oneself fully in a single film within the darkness of a movie theater feels more special than ever. We hope this year's festival will provide an opportunity to rediscover films once thought lost and uncover unexpected treasures hidden within film history.

May these films, revived after decades of obscurity, bring new excitement and inspiration to contemporary audiences.

Section 6. In Memoriam
This year's In Memoriam section is dedicated to remembering the lives and artistry of several international film artists who have recently passed away, through screenings of representative works. Audiences will have the opportunity to revisit films by artists who expanded the possibilities of cinema in their own unique ways, including the recently deceased actor Sam Neill, as well as Robert Redford, Diane Keaton, Brigitte Bardot, Rob Reiner, Marjane Satrapi, and Bela Tarr.

No selection of films could fully honor the depth of their contributions to cinema. Nevertheless, we hope that revisiting the moments they left behind on screen will help preserve both their films and their memories for years to come.

Note: Retrospectives on Korean filmmakers will instead be presented as dedicated first-anniversary memorial retrospectives in the future.

Section 7. Techniscope
Over the past several years, the Rediscovery and Restoration program has featured special sections exploring the history of film technology. The section explored 3D in 2023, Wider Cinema (Cinerama, CinemaScope, and Ultra Panavision) in 2024, and glorious VistaVision last year. All of these formats were developed by Hollywood during the 1950s in response to the growing popularity of television, offering audiences cinematic experiences that could only be enjoyed in theaters. Although these technologies originated decades ago, their influence on filmmaking continues to this day.

Where previous editions focused primarily on various forms of "big format" cinema, this year turns to a different technology: Techniscope.

Techniscope is a widescreen filming format first developed by Technicolor Rome in 1960. Unlike standard 35mm filmmaking, which uses four perforations per frame, Techniscope uses only two perforations (2-perf) while still producing a widescreen image. This significantly reduced the amount of negative film required, making it especially attractive for low-budget genre productions. Unlike CinemaScope, Techniscope also did not require anamorphic lenses during filming, allowing greater freedom of camera movement and more distinctive visual compositions. This made it particularly influential in shaping the unique visual styles of European genre cinema.

Roughly half of the widescreen films produced in Italy during the 1960s were shot in Techniscope, and after its official introduction to Korea in the 1970s, the format was adopted on a similarly wide scale. During this period, the Korean Color Laboratory developed its own Techniscope processing equipment and exported it overseas, demonstrating considerable technical expertise. Techniscope thus became an important technological foundation for Korean film production.

Producing exhibition prints for Techniscope required a specialized printing process. Once this processing technology disappeared domestically, it became impossible to make new release prints, leaving many films that survive only as original camera negatives effectively unviewable. Advances in digital technology, however, have made it possible to digitize these films and create new exhibition masters. Since 2008, the Korean Film Archive has steadily digitized Korean films shot in Techniscope. To date, 60 of the 149 surviving Korean Techniscope films have been digitized, allowing audiences to experience them once again.

The six Korean Techniscope films presented this year will all receive their first-ever theatrical screenings in this form. They include The Strange Youth (Lee Seok-gi, 1973), a lively comedy built around a series of crossed marriage proposals; Ttosuni and Gapsuni (Kim Hyo-cheon, 1973), an entertaining portrayal of rivalry and friendship between two spirited young women; Your Cold Hands (Park Jong-ho, 1974), actress Yoo Ji-in's screen debut, featuring Onion's Lee Soo-young and Lim Chang-je performing and singing together; Bridge of Death (Lee Doo-yong, 1974), a standout entry in Han Yong-cheol's taekwondo action series; Billy Jean (Kim Seon-kyung, 1974), notable for its bold Techniscope imagery and energetic genre filmmaking; and Return to Busan Port (Kim Sung-soo, 1977), which features the title song once hailed as "the biggest hit in the history of Korean popular music."

The section also features a range of international films that demonstrate the expressive possibilities of the Techniscope format. Since the process was developed in Italy, it became especially popular in quintessential Italian genres such as the spaghetti western and the giallo, represented here by Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), Lucio Fulci's Don't Torture a Duckling (1972), and Dario Argento's Deep Red (1975). The program also traces the format's spread across Europe and the United States through Jean-Luc Godard's Made in U.S.A. (1966), Sidney J. Furie's The Ipcress File (1965) and The Appaloosa (1966), and George Lucas's early hit American Graffiti (1973). Finally, in keeping with the tradition of this technology-focused section, the program concludes with Michael Morris's To Leslie (2022), presenting Techniscope not as a relic of the past but as a cinematic format that continues to inspire contemporary filmmaking.

Webzine Archi-view
Beyond Cost Savings, Toward New Aesthetic Possibilities: An Introduction to the 'Techniscope' Section of 'KOFA Rediscovery and Restoration Part 2' (Korean)