Paju Preservation Center is a specialized facility for preserving and restoring Korean films. Thanks to the opening of this center, Korean cinema now has an adequate space to keep its vast collection, and to develop film preservation infrastructure through cutting edge equipment. For this purpose, Paju Preservation Center has built a film development room and filled it with equipment for digital restoration.

To celebrate the opening of Paju Preservation Center, KOFA held an international symposium on video and film cultural heritage preservation and restoration on May 20th, and is opening a special screening called “Welcome to the Cinema World” from May 20th to June 17th.

At the international symposium, held in Theater 1 in KOFA, a Korean Film Archive Cinematheque located in Sangam-dong, Mapo-gu, Seoul, David Walsh from Imperial War Museum, Davide Pozzi from Cineteca di Bologna, Italy, and KIM Ji-hoon from Department of Film Studies, Chung-ang University, discussed the present and future of video and film archiving, with themes like “The Value Re-creation and Preservation of Video and Film Cultural Heritage” and “The Present and Future of Preservation and Restoration by Special Institution.”

At the special screening to celebrate Paju Preservation Center, the digital restoration version of An Aimless Bullet (1961), a classic Korean film masterpiece, is to be introduced for the first time. This special screening with 42 films in the list is also held at the KOFA Cinematheque in Sangam-dong, and all the events and screenings are free of charge. A detailed schedule can be found at the website of KOFA (http://www.koreafilm.org/main/main.asp).