West Bengal: NFAI starts restoration work of Satyajit Ray’s films

KOLKATA: The National Film Archive of India (

NFAI

) has begun the restoration work of Satyajit Ray’s documentary on

Sukumar Ray

, ‘Sonar Kella’ and ‘Hirak Rajar Deshe’ after getting the original negatives from the state government. The work is now being done on a priority basis on the grand auteur’s centenary year as part of the National Film Heritage Mission.


Ray’s son Sandip Ray is happy the restoration has begun. “While the Academy has restored some films, no restoration of these works has ever been done. I am glad that NFAI has taken up the project,” Ray said.

Two months ago, NFAI director Prakash

Magdum

came to Kolkata and met officials of the state I&CA department. The Bengal government was the producer of both ‘Sonar Kella’ (1974) and ‘Hirak Rajar Deshe’ (1980). In 1987, it also produced ‘Sukumar Ray’ the documentary that Ray made on his father. “Since we knew the Bengal government was the producer, we approached them for the original negatives. The government responded positively and I also visited the vault where the negatives were kept. In October, these three negatives were sent across to us in Pune,” Magdum said.

The 4K scanning of the negatives have been done. According to Magdum, the condition of these negatives is ‘okay’. Sandip Ray has also been shown the basic grading of ‘Sonar Kella’. “They have done a good job of removing the spots and scratches. We have also given the original subtitle sheet of ‘Sonar Kella’ to NFAI,” he said.

Restoration will now begin that will take at least two months to finish. “We are expecting the work to be over by Ray’s birth anniversary on May 2,” he added.

During his visit, Magdum also approached the producer of ‘Pratidwandi’ for the original camera negative. “We met Purnima Dutta at her office. I was pleasantly surprised that she had kept the negatives in decent condition in her own custody for over 50 years. I am very thankful to her for entrusting NFAI to do the restoration of a very important Ray film. The negatives have been scanned by the state-of-the-art Munich-based ARRI scanner. Now each frame will have to be restored individually. One second that we watch is equivalent to 24 frames of a scanned film,” he explained.

The NFAI has also approached the state to restore some short films and documentaries produced by them. Magdum came across a 1952 film called ‘Pasher Bari’ that was directed by Sudhir Mukherjee with music by Salil Chowdhury in this vault. “Apparently, ‘Padosan’ was inspired by this to some extent. This film is partly in nitrate. Having nitrate as a base was phased out in the 1950s. We will preserve it now apart from scanning it. We are arranging for this to be transferred from Kolkata to Pune,” he said.


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