Was trying to find the movie Pardesi on DVD and found some interesting clips on youtube from the Indian and Russian DVDs of this movie.

The Indian DVD looks very bad (no surprise) whereas the Russian DVD is in the OAR, colour and looks well preserved for a movie of this age. I maanged to find a copy of the Russian DVD and it is a great representation of the movie. It is in Russian with English subtitles (Hindi dialogue was dubbed in to Russian but the songs are still in Hindi). The Russian actors were dubbed in to Hindi for the Indian version.

Check out the clips below for an idea of the differences:

Russian DVD clip:

Embedded Flash video (no longer playable): http://www.youtube.com/v/cwIbvwyK2lU

Hindi DVD clip:

Embedded Flash video (no longer playable): http://www.youtube.com/v/q7h5M-uQkFY

I got the Russian DVD from Amazon. The Hindi DVD is hard to come by. I have seen it released by T-Series and also I have seen a copy available in the UK by Spark. Not sure how the quality of the Spark DVD is. Anyone have a copy of the Spark DVD?

Hey Muz

Thanks for this topic , i have meaning to ask about this movie on here. Can you please post me the link to where you bought this movie from. I love the songs, especially 'Nadir Dheem Tana Dere Na' by Lata Mangeshkar. Anil Biswas was a musical genius. Padmini-ji was so graceful onscreen. I have seen the clips on youtube, what interested me was the entire movie. Was this a collaboration between India - Russia? I would love to see this movie. The Russian print is in colour and the Indian version is in B&W, as per youtube.

Thanks alot.

Hey

Here is the link on Amazon for the Russian DVD:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002PSI8NG/ref=oss_product

I had an old VHS of the Hindi version that was in colour (very faded colour and very bad print) but this movie was released in Hindi and in colour. It was an Indo-Russian collaboration.

I was hoping to get more info about the movie from folk on here as well. It is interesting to see the difference in the way the film has been treated for its DVD release.

Thanks.

Thanks Muz

I am def getting this one. I've been wanting to watch this movie for a while now

Good find Muz. Rusian DVD quality seems excellent. Moreover, it's in color as compared to Indian version that's B/W.
Following Muz's link, look for 21-22 min of song clips from this russian video provided by bhandari2k
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwIbvwyK ... _embedded#!

I wonder, if color film was shot & developed in color or just colored manually, like sme other films of that time ??

I wonder if there is Russian amazon website and if we can find Russia sourced Mera Naam Joker & Sangam ?? Russia sourced Joker sure will have extra footage that's not avail in Indian version.
Does anyone know, under what Russian title were these two films released ??

Doing a bit of google searching and found this DVD:

Сангам



But as far as I can make out from the Russian web-site the running time is 159 minutes. DVD is Pal - but still way shorter than the Hindi version.

Мое имя клоун



Running time 224 minutes. Anyhow - not sure how to buy these easily. I think I got lucky with Pardesi as Amazon had it from a NJ based seller.

excellent find

Some more Russian DVDs of Hindi films:

Wajahh - A Reason to Kill



Ek Khiladi Ek Haseena



Akayla



Tum Haseen Main Jawaan

bhaskar, could you pl post some link for the Russian DVDs.

Seeing all these Russian versions of Hindi DVDs, I'm sure they'll have Mera Naam Joker as well. MNJ may have flopped in India initially, it was a big hit in Russia. I'm interested in finding the extra footage, that for sure the Russian MNJ DVD will have.

- imdb lists Pardesi as 110 min Hindi and 76 min Russian, whereas Russian DVD is 136 min.

--------------------------
Mods: As the discussion has changed to Russian-Bollywood DVDs, can we change the thread title to reflect this.

"Pardesi (1957) / A Journey Beyond the Three Seas (& other Russian-Bollywood) DVDs"

Didn't realise there are loads of Russian DVDs of Hindi films - available here:

http://www.russiandvd.com/store/dvd.asp ... esubid=110

The only Raj Kapoor films they have here are Prem Rog, Ram Teri Ganga Maili, Shree 420 and Satyam Shivam Sundaram.

I found/picked up 3 Russian Bollywood DVDs to check out the PQ/ runtime etc.
Dhool Ka Phool has Hindi as well as Russian audio tracks but Jaal (Mandakini) and Muddat are in Russian only and no sub-titles. Songs were in orig language though.

As expected, results are mixed, some excellent, some average. All three were DVD-5.

Best was Dhoool Ka Phool, full 154 min corresponding to film 4200 meters on CC (1970). It's Pseudo-Prog with 3-2 pull down available and hence Progressive. Despite low bit rate (DVD-5), PQ beats any Hindi B/W DVD.

(Only a few Bollywood B/W DVDs are Progressive. All, except a few, are PAL to NTSC converted field averaged & 4% speed-up)

Other two, Muddat and Jaal were similar to Shemaroo Field Averaged prints.

---------------------------------
One thing that did check out is that run-time printed on DVD specs does correspond with the actual DVD run-time.

This makes Mamta DVD, a good one to look for as Russian version is almost an hour longer than the Hindi DVD.

And, of course, Russian Pardesi DVD that has excellent PQ as seen in the starting post.

Title: Хождение за три моря / Pardesi / Journey Beyond Three Seas
Actors: Oleg Strizhenov, Nargis, Padmini, Vitali Belyakov, Stepan Kayukov, Varvara Obukhova, Balraj Sahni, Prithviraj Kapoor, David Abraham, P. Jairaj, Manmohan Krishna, Achala Sachdev...
Country: USSR, India
Production: Mosfilm, Naya Sansar
Premiere: October 1957 (Delhi, India), January 25, 1958 (Moscow, USSR)
Play time: 02:23:23
Series: 2
Genre Film: adventure, historical feature film
Language: Russian
Subtitles: No
Quality:DVD9
Awards and nominations: 1958 - Nominated for the "Palme d'Or" at the Cannes Film Festival, 1958 - Filmfare Magazine Award for the best work of the artist (M. Achhrekar).

Menu:



Anamorphic screenshots:

Indian DVD9

Play time: 01:37:31
Language: Hindi
Subtitles: English
Quality: DVD9

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Screenshots:

To consolidate names of Russian DVDs of interest, I'm listing DVDs mentioned in other posts in here:

Ek Hi Bhool:
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=13074&p=105380#p105380

Janoo: (PAL DVD)
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=13070&p=105325#p105325

Devdas (2002):
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=13062&p=105313#p105313