Reel partners

South Korea's biggest-grossing film in history is a work that features popular Korean actors, but also benefits significantly from Hong Kong star power. Last summer, The Thieves sold a record-breaking 13 million tickets in South Korea, and part of the appeal was the presence of actors Simon Yam Tat-wah, Derek Tsang Kwok-cheung and Lee Sinje, and even the urban landscapes of Hong Kong and Macau.

To South Koreans in their 20s, this might have seemed novel - yet co-productions and partnerships between the film industries of Hong Kong and South Korea stretch far back into the past.

This history was highlighted earlier this month with a screening at the Korean Film Archive of the newly restored Love with an Alien (1958), the first South Korean-Hong Kong co-production. What sounds like a science-fiction film is actually a touching cross-cultural romance featuring South Korea's Kim Jin-gyu and Hong Kong star Lucilla Yu Ming. She plays a talented young nightclub singer, while he plays a songwriter visiting from South Korea. It's love (almost) at first sight, but an unknown wrinkle in his past threatens to doom their romance.

Film historians from both lands have long been interested in this work, which is also the South's first colour film. But the only surviving copy, in the Shaw Brothers' private collection, was too badly damaged to be screened. Last June, Korean Film Archive's representatives reached an agreement with Shaw Brothers to borrow the negative for digital restoration, carried out in Japan by Imagica Corp.

Unfortunately, Love with an Alien's sound is irreparably lost, and much of the visuals are badly degraded. The screening in April was furnished with subtitles taken from the screenplay, so that the audience could follow the story. Nonetheless, the film's commercial appeal and glamour shone through even without sound, and with images in which many of the blacks have chemically decomposed into a glowing green. Korean journalists, while noting the damage to the print, declared it "no obstruction" to enjoyment of the film. Public screenings at the Korean Film Archive in Seoul are scheduled for May, and the film is likely to travel further afield in the coming year.

At the time it was shot, this pioneering work of cinematic collaboration meant a great deal to a poor nation still trying to recover from a devastating war. "This may sound funny today, but before flying to Hong Kong we made an offering at the National Cemetery, and a military band played music as our plane took off," says 79-year-old actor Yoon Il-bong, who played a supporting role in the film.