Tokkan Kozo - Digital Scholarship Lab

Update! Tokkan Kozo will be available to stream via Le Cinéma Club from July 19 – 25. For more info on their recently re-launched platform check this Indiewire article.

The Digital Scholarship Lab’s Josh Romphf and Clara Auclair collaborated with Modern Languages and Cultures Professor Joanne Bernardi, The George Eastman Museum, and the Toy Film Museum (Kyoto, Japan) to create a Digital Cinema Package (DCP) of a partially lost 1929 film by Japanese legend Yasujiro Ozu titled Tokkan Kozo (A Straightforward Boy). DCP has become the standard for distribution since the industry has moved away from 35mm film projection.

Recovering Cinematic History

The DSL worked to create subtitles for the film’s Japanese intertitles (translated by Bernardi), improve image stability and sharpness, and author / format the Digital Cinema Package (DCP). The DCP was created from a standard definition scan by Imagica West of a 9.5mm print held by the Toy Film Museum. Initially, the DSL used a deep-learning application to double the resolution of each individual frame of the standard definition transfer to increase resolution for the high definition (2K) DCP.

Then, the DSL’s Clara Auclair proceeded to use DaVinci Resolve to create the subtitles from Bernardi’s translation, stabilize each frame, and carefully adjust sections of the film’s playback speed.

Still from film within correction and caption frame.

Future Film Screenings

The DCP of Yasujiro Ozu’s Tokkan Kozo had its premiere at Le Giornate del Cinema Muto in Pordenone, Italy in October 2018 and was screened at the George Eastman Museum in November 2018.