Old classics get new lease of life

When the Indian government decided to pay tribute to Rabindranath Tagore on his 150th birth anniversary by bringing out a DVD of some classic films based on his work, they realised that sourcing the content would be a difficult task.

A search at The National Film Archives of India (NFAI) revealed that there was not a single negative or print of the 1961 classic Kabuliwala. Finally, the National Film Development Corporation (NFDC) managed to source a televised format of the film from Bimal Roy’s family. The film was an adaptation of Tagore’s work of the same title.

Kabuliwala, Char Adhyaya, Khudito Pashan, Teen Kanya and Ghare Bhaire will be released in DVD format on Saturday. Char Adhyaya and Khudito Pashan were recovered from NFAI.

Interestingly, NFDC had to approach the US Academy of Motion Pictures for a copy of Teen Kanya. “The films were sourced from India and abroad before being sent for restoration,” said a source.
After floating tenders for the restoration last year, two Mumbai labs were given the video restoration while a Pune lab worked on the audio. “The prints were old and badly preserved. The damage included static, wear and tear and degeneration,” sources said.

The audio damage was high and technicians had to struggle to remove crackle and static from the tapes while trying to ensure that the original sound remained unaffected. They were also converted to a high resolution format for archiving.