Fir se, Pakeezah

Midway through our conversation about restoring Pakeezah Shivendra Singh Dungarpurrsquos phone rang ldquoMr Amitabh Bachchan is calling merdquo he said stepping away for a moment for Bachchan to compliment him It was a small fitting reminder of how much Kamal Amrohirsquos 1972 classic still means to people more than 50 years onFor Dungarpur this one was personal He grew up watching Pakeezah mdash his grandmother loved it mdash and had wanted to restore it for years That finally became possible after he met Amrohirsquos children Tajdar and Rukhsar and through their son Bilal convinced the family to let him take it on Nearly two years later he calls it one of the most fulfilling restorations of his careerThe problem with no ldquomotherrdquoThe first roadblock was simple but severe there was no original camera negative What survived was thirdgeneration material mdash copies of copies each one having bled away detail ldquoThe original camera negative is the most important itrsquos called the mother for that reasonrdquo Dungarpur explains ldquoItrsquos the material that came directly out of the camerardquo He compares it to the difference between a highresolution photo and a version thatrsquos been screenshotted and reshared a dozen times over ldquoIf you have the source you have the originrdquoKamal AmrohiWith nothing but degraded copies to work from the team went almost frame by frame pulling out whatever information they could Hersquod faced a similar problem restoring Sholay 1975 mdash but Pakeezahrsquos tangled colour history made this one harder stillWhen a colour disappearsPakeezah actually began life as a blackandwhite film before the switch to colour eventually shot on Eastman Kodak stock in CinemaScope But decades on the surviving prints couldnrsquot be trusted to show what those colours actually were The clearest case was Meena Kumarirsquos costume in Inhi Logon mdash the prints had faded so badly that nobody could agree what shade it was even supposed to beRather than guess the team went back to old photographs and worked with the Amrohi family to match the dress to its real original tones For Dungarpur thatrsquos the heart of restoration not repainting a film in whatever colours look good now but doing the research to get back to what audiences actually saw on releaseShivendra Singh DungarpurFourteen years in the makingPart of what makes Pakeezah so tricky is that it didnrsquot get made in one continuous stretch mdash the production dragged on for roughly 14 years It started in black and white including the earliest version of Inhi Logon before shifting to colour partway through The delay even reshaped the cast Ashok Kumar originally attached to the film had aged out of his part by the time shooting resumed and Raj Kumar stepped in as the lead Restoring the film meant preserving something that had physically passed through several different eras of Indian cinema before it ever reached a screen mdash which is part of why Dungarpur sees it as a film that shaped generations after it from Sanjay Leela Bhansali onwardMeena KumariDonrsquot scrub away the soulFor Dungarpur restoration isnrsquot about making an old film look new Itrsquos about keeping what made the film feel the way it did mdash grain included ldquoGrain is like the bloodstream in your bodyrdquo he says Strip it all out chasing a spotless digital image and you lose something essential That matters more now that audiences are used to the oversharpened look of streaming platforms ldquoWhat does your eye see when you open your eyes and what does your Amazon or Netflix show you What they show isnrsquot what you actually see Therersquos a differencerdquo Celluloid he says came closer to how the eye naturally perceives things mdash so the goal with Pakeezah wasnrsquot to make it look freshly shot today but to bring back its lost detail and colour while keeping its original texture intactCan AI bring back whatrsquos goneThat same philosophy shapes how Dungarpur thinks about AI in restoration He doesnrsquot dismiss it outright but hersquos wary of calling something ldquorestorationrdquo when itrsquos really recreationHis analogy if a piece of the Taj Mahalrsquos original marble falls off the instinct should be to track down the real marble first mdash not swap in a nicerlooking replacement just because itrsquos available ldquoThere are shops outside selling even better marble than that We could do that too It wonrsquot matchrdquoIf the original element still exists he says use it If itrsquos truly gone AI might have a role to play mdash but the line between restoring and recreating has to stay clear ldquoTherersquos a lot of manual work in film preservation right now Maybe AI evolves into something more Whether that makes things better wersquoll have to seerdquoHe points to the runaway success of Christopher Nolanrsquos The Odyssey mdash shot on celluloid no digital effects no AI mdash as evidence people havenrsquot lost their appetite for the real thing He sees the same pull in how audiences are responding to restored classics like Sholay at Film Heritage Foundation screenings ldquoThere must be a reason people want to connect back to their rootsrdquoDid you knowInternational premiegravereThe restored 4K version of the 1972 classic Pakeezah is set to have its world premiegravere at the Festival Lumiegravere in Lyon France in October followed by a screening at the BFI London Film Festival in the United KingdomThe original negative is gonePakeezahrsquos original camera negative mdash the closest surviving source to what was filmed mdash was unavailable for the restoration Dungarpurrsquos team had to work with much poorer thirdgeneration materialThat ldquopinkrdquo costume may not have been pinkThe surviving prints had faded so severely that the colour of Meena Kumarirsquos costume in ldquoInhi Logonrdquo was difficult to establish The team referred to photographs and consulted the Amrohi family to recreate the original colour tonesDuring the prolonged production Ashok Kumar aged considerably and Raj Kumar eventually came on board as the male lead14 years two leading menPakeezah took around 14 years to make It began as a blackandwhite film and later switched to colour During the prolonged production Ashok Kumar aged considerably and Raj Kumar eventually came on board as the male lead