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Tilda Swinton brings Hollywood star power to a conversation on restoring classic films at Hong Kong’s M+

Tilda Swinton recently visited Hong Kong’s M+ art museum, shining her A-list light on the vital role of film preservation in connecting audiences to a more authentic version of cinematic storytelling

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Tilda Swinton hits Hong Kong to make the case for film preservation and praise the magic of old cinema. Photo: Courtesy of Chanel

Published: 12:15pm, 9 Feb 2025

An onstage discussion about film conservation seems an unlikely big-ticket draw in Hong Kong a week before Lunar New Year. And yet a large crowd has arrived an hour early, to stand outside in what passes for winter here, wrapped up in scarves outside M+, in the West Kowloon Cultural District. Nearby, skateboarders pop ollies and young girls practice K-pop dance routines. Tourists pass the queue bewildered by all the fuss.

Said fuss is the presence of Tilda Swinton, the Hollywood A-lister who will later be introduced onto the stage as “one of the greatest actresses, writers, curators, creative practitioners of all sorts of our time”. It’s quite the tally, but Swinton resists any aggrandisement.

When I later allude to her status as a global icon, her head rears back and with a grin like the Cheshire Cat – “I like the way you dropped that so casually, ‘as a global icon’!”

She laughs, but surely she’s used to such fawning? “Oh yes, I’ve got a mug at home with ‘global icon’ written on it.”

Silke Schmickl, Chanel lead curator for moving image at M+, Tang Shu-shuen and Tilda Swinton take part in “Why Restoration Matters? A Conversation with Tilda Swinton and Tang Shu-shuen” at M+ in Hong Kong, on January 21. Photo: Courtesy of Chanel

Swinton engages in the kind of self-deprecation that only the truly famous can afford, but in my defence, it’s also not often Hong Kong attracts these sorts of stars. Such bona fides usually fly to Beijing or Shanghai to appeal to the mainland market, or hit Macau for some of that endorsement money. What Hong Kong does have, however, is an unmatched cinematic heritage. The facts are old but bear repeating, that at the height of the Hong Kong film industry, in the early 1990s, the tiny territory produced more films than any market besides Hollywood and Bollywood, exporting star power such as Wong Kar-wai and Jackie Chan. And long before that, Bruce Lee, and whatever came out of the legendary Shaw Brothers studios had inspired generations of filmmakers around the world.