FWIW, Film Movement is apparently re-releasing Center Stage on UHD through Vinegar Syndrome, which would be great news except now I'm concerned how it will look like. I guess we'll see.qw0aszx wrote: Fri Jul 24, 2026 5:53 pm Some noticeable recent releases from Disk Kino:
Center Stage UHD (1991)
- 4K restoration of the complete director's cut from original camera negatives, with a complete re-grading* in Dolby Vision
*Both Rouge and Center Stage were scanned and restored by Ritrovata, then given to HK lab Interface for color grading. Interface did a horrible job and destroyed the original appearance and the grain structure of the whole film for both titles. To give this film a proper presentation, Disk Kino regraded the whole film in Dolby Vision.
Also, a friend of mine saw one of the Center Stage screenings at Film Forum this weekend - he's unable to judge how it looks, but he can confirm that the DCP is the complete director's cut without anything missing (unlike the current Blu-ray, which has been discussed elsewhere here).
Anyway, more info on the restoration from this interview, which probably explains why the 35mm print I saw could only be the shorter version:
Kwan apparently said that Golden Harvest destroyed the negatives for everything he removed from his original cut, so that print in Australia is the best and only-known source for that footage.Stanley Kwan wrote:I can tell you that right after Maggie Cheung won the Best Actress award at Berlin, the film came back to Hong Kong. Jackie Chan, who was the film’s executive producer, also had a charity fund and decided to host a premiere screening of Center Stage to raise money for it. The cinema that night was big, with a full house. But by the end of the film, half of the audience had left. That’s why Golden Harvest insisted, “Stanley, you have to shorten the film and cut out the documentary part of the ending funeral scene.”
That’s why when the film was released in Hong Kong, there wasn’t a director’s cut. It was a shortened cut because Golden Harvest insisted that, especially the ending part, where it showed the documentary part, it disturbed the audience emotionally. Finally, since we had already shown the film in Hong Kong, we sent it to Australia for screening at the Sydney Film Festival. However, they kept the original director’s cut, and we were able to preserve the intended version of the film, which is now available.