Recent Projects

Based on a 35mm Interpositive this film has been digitized and restored to HD-resolution on behalf of Kinowelt label Arthaus. The wide-screen Cinemascope (2,35:1) format has been captured to the maximum of the image, which causes every splice in the film to be a case of manual retouch. Prior to the scanning we performed a scene-by-scene color correction to perfectly represent the various skin tones and also underline the artful use of color accents that the director had in mind for the scenes. The restoration process reduced dust and scratch, blotches and stains, as well as numerous vertical lines that were printed in the material. With every step of the restoration process the beautiful film of famous director Yimou Zhang („Hero“, „House of Flying Daggers“, „Leben!“) became clearer and regained its original beauty. The resulting mastertape in HDCAM-SR will now be the source for the release as DVD and BluRay disk. It carries both, a restored german and the original mandarin sound track.

The Bridge is one of the most-powerful antiwar films ever made. Based on an autobiographical novel by Manfred Gregor, it depicts seven Bavarian schoolboys who face death defending an insignificant bridge against an American attack in the last days of World War 2. The film first vividly pictures the home lives and personal problems of the boys. Then we see the boys joyfully discover they are being drafted into the Wehrmacht, after which they are assigned to defend a bridge at the edge of their town. Unknown to them, a colonel has given them this assignment because the bridge is strategically useless, planning to withdraw them before the Germans blow it up. Based on a true incident, this powerful anti-war drama from West Germany tells of a group of teenagers in 1945 who are drafted into the remnants of Hitler’s army. Called on to defend a bridge leading to their hometown from the approaching American forces, the young men prepare to carry out their duty…even if it costs them their lives.

This film did not come easily to the screen. Many publishers rejected Manfred Gregor’s book, several directors rejected the script, and the young actors in the film had little or no experience. Yet in the end The Bridge succeeded spectacularly. The director, Bernhard Wicki, was able to elicit harrowing performances from his cast, and the film received accolades from all over the World, «<euTorrents

For broadcasting the film in HD we digitized the edited Original Negative in 2K resolution using our WetGate process. Several kinds of image defects in that original negative caused quite explicit image restoration to gain the best result from that scan.