The
Audio-Visual Heritage Restoration Center at EMPC is considered one of the
largest specialized restoration centers in the Middle East. It was established
in 2018 to preserve the heritage and ancient photographic treasures owned by
Egypt .
The center is also an important qualitative leap in this
specialty in Egypt, as it offers a wide range of services in the field of
restoring cinema heritage and films digital restoration. As Egypt owns the
largest share of movies in the Arab world, about three quarters of the number
of movies produced since 1930, and for fear that this huge and precious stock
will be damaged and worn out, EMPC has taken this step out of its cultural
responsibility to save this huge cinema heritage and preserve it for future
generations.
The center includes the latest technologies in the field of
digital film scanning, converting it to a digital format with the highest
quality 6K and digital restoration, That’s in addition to a group of
well-trained professionals in order to preserve the vision of the original
filmmakers for future generations and to reach the highest level of efficiency
to keep pace with the international standards specialized in this regard.
Services provided by the Restoration Center
1- Films Physical restoration:
It is the
first important stage to restore the film. This process is manual in which the
films are manually checked and all joints, holes,
fractures and ruptures of images are repaired and cleaned to
remove dirt and dust accumulated on the surface of the filmstrip.
2- Film scanning:
In order
to recover film material from severely degraded filmstrips, the center is
equipped with a highly professional ARRISCAN XT scanner that is capable of
capturing as much detail as possible and delivering up to 6k resolution, paving
the way to reach back and restore the image to its original greatness.
The center also contains an advanced device attached to the
scanner, ARRISCAN WETGATE, which provides a unique solution to hide dust and
scratches and thus improve the quality of the transmitted image.
3- Digital restoration:
● Digital Image Restoration: A group of the most advanced
digital recovery programs in the world is used, whereby the missing information
in the image is replaced by the images that precede and follow it to re-create
the parts of the missing or severely damaged images while restoring the
sharpness of colors and image stability.
● Sound restoration: the sound is purified and corrected
using Protools, in addition to sound recovery in an advanced way using image to
sound tools provided by ARRI, which is an effective method for transmitting
sound in a digital form by transcribing the sound in the form of an image using
the high-quality scanning device provided by ARRISCAN XT.
Our previous work
* Restoration of the
entire collection of the Egyptian Film Newspaper (2389 issues) covering the
time period from 1952 to 2015 for Egypt State Information Service.
* Restoration of 140
documentary films for Egypt State Information Service.
* Restoration of the
feature films “A Little Love… Lots of Violence” 1995, “Watch Out for Zuzu”
1972, and “Love in Karnak” 1967 for Red Sea International Film Festival.
* Restoration of the
feature films “Diary of a Deputy in the Countryside” 1969 and “A Song on the
Passage” 1972 for Cairo International Film Festival.
