I tried to depart a little from the traditional martial-arts genre. Instead of treating these characters as heroes, I wanted to see them as ordinary people – at the stage before they became heroes. – Wong Kar-wai

Wong Kar-wai’s restored, re-scored, expanded, recolored and re-edited Ashes of Time Redux premiered tonight at the New York Film Festival. Playing before a sold out crowd at the 1,131-seat Ziegfeld Theatre, Wong Kar-wai was joined on stage afterward for Q&A with the still beautiful actress Brigitte Lin and cinematographer Christopher Doyle.

The acclaimed film has has been digitally colorized from the 1994 print, at times adding beauty to the cinematography, but sometimes too digitally enhanced for some viewers of the original release depending on who you asked at the screening. It seemed everyone was in agreement the subtitles received a nice revision. Regardless, if you’ve only seen this film on DVD, you’re in for a special treat when this story of swordplay and ill fortunes gets a wider theatrical release in the USA on October 10.

Shot in the Chinese desert like an Eastern Western of lone swordsmen and lost lovers, Wong Kar-wai brings to stirring life The Eagle-Shooting Heroes, Louis Cha’s jianghu novel of wuxia (martial arts).

Visual and audible improvements are significant to Ashes of Time Redux. The original film print was restored to the highest quality technologically possible. Even still, seven of the original minutes of footage were lost forever from the damaged original print. Beautiful cello solos are performed by Yo-yo Ma, and the left-over-from-the-80’s synth score has been nicely been recorded and updated to contemporary standards.

In addition to Brigitte Lin, Ashes of Time Redux features had some of the biggest Hong Kong movie stars from that decade — the late Leslie Cheung, Tony Leung Ka-fai, and Maggie Cheung.

An international A-list director without the ego, Wong Kar-wai stuck around after the Q&A to sign autographs and take photos. Brigitte Lin and Christopher Doyle were equally surrounded by fans and signing autographs. Finally, security had to come down and stop Wong Kar-wai from signing autographs as he seemed to have no intent of stopping on his own.

Production still images courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.