NFDC plays yesterday once more
Kim Arora TNN

New Delhi: The National Film Development Corporation (NFDC) film restoration project, which began two years ago, is now bearing fruit. Fifty six of the 80 films on the NFDC list have been restored. DVDs of some digitally restored films hit the retail market earlier this month under the NFDC’s home video label, ‘Cinemas of India’.

Some of the digitally restored classics out on DVD are: Ketan Mehta’s “Mirch Masala”, Tapan Sinha’s “Ek Doctor Ki Maut”, Sudhir Mishra’s ‘Dharavi”, A K Bir’s “Shesha Drishti”, Kundan Shah’s “Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron” and Saeed Mirza’s “Salim Langde Pe Mat Ro”.

Film negatives of classics such as “Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro”, “Suraj Ka Saatvan Ghoda”, “Ghare Baire”, “Agantuk”, etc, have been stored at the NFDC labs and the film archives for over two decades. Over time, the negatives of these films began to deteriorate. Cinematographers, colour analysts and sound engineers were among nearly a 100 others called on to begin the restoration of these films. The Union ministry of information and broadcasting allocated Rs 10 crore for this project.

“There were cases like in ‘Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron’ where light had leaked into the negative in the Mahabharat scene, giving it a pinkish tinge. There was a green line running through parts of ’ Rudaali’ where the negative had curled up. In some cases, the negative was entirely lost,” says NFDC chairperson Nina Lath Gupta highlighting the scale of deterioration. The time taken to restore each print depends on the extent of damage. A Tagore DVD set, for example, could be managed in a month. But ‘Rudaali’, on the other hand, has taken over a year already.

Cinematographer A K Bir and sound designer Nakul Kamte are working as consultants on the project.

“It was necessary to get these works of art to the next generation. It is an investment into the future,” says Bir, who says Satyajit Ray’s Jalsaghar was one of the most difficult films to restore so far. “The negative was that film did not exist. The restoration was done from an existing positive. It is now available in digital format,” he says. Gupta says that while negatives are anyway perishable, the problem in India is compounded because of dust.

Saving some of these negatives could have been easier with an earlier intervention. “NFDC had been going through losses. The revamping and restructuring took its time,” explains Gupta.

"Train to Pakistan" is cut! The more physically-intimate scenes are not featured on the shemaroo/nfdc DVD. Though you can find the same scenes in the version earlier released by EAGLE.

have you bought GANDHI, released recently... could you please place some screenshots and tell me in which language this dvd???
amit

Either they come up with a 29.970 fps blended progressive transfer (for movies that were definitely shot on film) with tons and tons of ghosting (fieldblends). The studio is doing a 24->30 fps sliding-blend-conversion. As a result, the video shows very ugly and funky blocking artifacts (the blocking is introduced after the blending).