CHANEL is rescuing classic Hong Kong cinema. Cathay Pacific is putting it on your in-flight screen. Here’s the story.
M+ is Hong Kong’s museum of contemporary visual culture and it’s restoring nine classic Hong Kong films through an initiative called M+ Restored. The project is supported by global high fashion brand CHANEL and forms part of the brand’s wider Culture Fund, which backs arts organisations around the world.
CHANEL’s support for M+ Restored fits into a broader pattern of the luxury brand’s investment through its Culture Fund. This fund works with what it calls “Art Partners” i.e. institutions whose leaders get long-term backing to run ambitious cultural projects. Beyond M+, CHANEL has supported similar initiatives at CalArts in Southern California, Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin, the Venice Biennale, and the British Film Institute. The Culture Fund also runs the CHANEL Next Prize, which gives artists mentorship and resources, and a podcast series called CHANEL Connects. In short: M+ Restored is one strand of a much larger, century-long commitment that CHANEL has made to supporting the arts globally.
4K restoration scans the original film negative, then cleans each frame of scratches, colour fade and decay. The result: films from the 1960s, 70s and 80s look sharper and more vivid than they ever did in their original cinema release!
The initiative is restoring nine Hong Kong films in 4K, released in three phases:
- Phase 1 (2025): The System (1979), The Arch (1968), Love Massacre (1981)
- Phase 2 (2026): Cageman (1992), Just Like Weather (1986), The Butterfly Murders (1979)
- Phase 3: To be announced later in 2026
These films are all part of the “Hong Kong New Wave,” a movement from the late 1970s and 80s known for bold, experimental filmmaking.
In Autumn 2026, the first three restored titles, The Arch, The System and Love Massacre will be added to Cathay Pacific’s inflight entertainment system. This makes Cathay the first airline to offer 4K ultra-high-definition (four times the resolution of standard HD) content onboard. It builds on an existing partnership between Cathay and the West Kowloon Cultural District (where M+ is based), which began in 2025 with a series called WestK in the Sky, bringing arts content to travellers.
So, passengers flying with Cathay will soon be able to watch classic, newly restored Hong Kong films in high definition at 35,000 feet, as a way of sharing this restored cinematic heritage with international audiences beyond festival screenings and museum showings.
