Classic revival

What is the restoration process undertaken by the NFDC The NFDC has the finest catalogue of films in the country We realised that a lot of negatives were in a state of deterioration so we wanted to restore the movies in a digital format The aim was to restore 80 films within a span of two years As of now we have digitally restored 17 movies and released them under the home video label lsquoCinemas of Indiarsquo on DVDs for the public These include classics such as Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro Dharavi Mirch Masala Party Ek Hota Vidushak Duvidha and so on The DVDs are priced at Rs 199 each NFDC MD Nina Lath Gupta strikes a pose at her Worli office PIC Bipin Kokate Why is the restoration of a film essential A film negative is a perishable product The restoration of a film is essential mainly for two reasons Firstly we donrsquot have facilities in India to preserve the negative And secondly the climactic conditions are not conducive for it to sustain for a long time Abroad the master negative is usually safe as multiple negatives of it are made So the master negative is not accessed as much In India we strike prints directly from the master negative This repeated use of the negative ruins it over a period of time We canrsquot follow the same process as they do abroad since it is expensive How does the process work Restoration essentially means taking the film to its original state when it was first made We start off by identifying the source material We pick it up from a negative Then we digitally scan it and later we colour correct it frame by frame We usually ask the director and the director of photography DOP to be involved in the restoration process For instance while restoring Party we sought the help of Govind Nihalani In case the director and the DOP of the concerned film were no longer alive for instance for Satyajit Rayrsquos movies we sought the assistance of filmmaker AK Bir who oversaw the process For sound process we used the expertise of awardwinning sound engineer Nakul Kamte Was there any criterion while choosing the films for restoration We wanted to disseminate the film culture So we first picked up those movies that were in public memory However having said that we want to promote all kinds of cinema mdash right from Adishankaracharya the first film in Sanskrit to the most popular Hindi movie What challenges did you face The challenge was different for each film For instance when we decided to restore Rayrsquos Teen Kanya we realised that there was no source material available in India The Academy of Motion Pictures and Arts had restored it in the 1980s So we asked them for a copy But when we got it we realised that there was scope for further restoration so we repeated the process In the case of Kalpana Lajmirsquos Rudaali there was a green line running through some frames as the negative had curled up It was one of the earliest films to go in for restoration and took the maximum time Then in Kundan Shahrsquos Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro the Mahabharata sequence towards the climax was in pink as light had crept into the negative So it took us a lot of time to colour correct it During this entire exercise we learnt that colour correction is a huge challenge With the advent of the digital domain is restoration still important The digital domain has become powerful and is constantly evolving First we had floppy disks then we had CDs DVDs and now we have the hard drive The negative can be restored in whatever form you have But there is a possibility that the hard drive can disappear or crash Also in the future we might use some other kind of storage device rather than the hard drive Today thanks to YouTube and other sites filmmakers can put up their films directly on these sites and they will be there for posterity But what about the earlier movies In such cases restoration becomes important What are NFDCrsquos future plans The NFDC will be the executing agency of the National Film Heritage Mission that will be launched under the aegis of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting from April As part of this programme we will put together the film heritage of India collect all kinds of audiovisual documentation and motion pictures and restore them within a span of five yearsu00a0