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A 58 years old Indian Classical Movie, restored recently then applied for premiering in The Venice International Film Festival. They Selected It

Published on August 27, 2015

Guru Dutt’s classical movie Pyaasa will premiere in the ‘classics’ section of 72^nd Venice International Film festival. The film tells the story of couples from different family background; the male lead role of this film was handled by Guru Dutt, acted as a poet and the female lead role was handled by Mala Sinha, acted as an impoverished lover. The British Film Institute nominated the name of the movie among the list of top 100 films of all time.

The film completed its entire lab patch works and restored completely. The theatrical right of the film was acquired by Ultra Media and Entertainment. The Vinoth Moda, post production lab supervisor of this film said to TOI Media that ‘Most of the film footage was damaged. So, the only one remaining solution was to scan both the negative and the print, use as much as sustained original camera negatives and some parts from the 35 mm scanned prints.’

The successful restoring of the film was achieved because of the effort of 45 technicians from the Ultra Studio & Digital Lab; they closely analyzed the 2 Lakh frames of this film for almost four months, using their own plug-in and third party softwares. They terminated and altered the splices, wraps, jitters and the green patches stuck on the film rushes and later convert it to a 2K resolution Digital format. In olden days the celluloid films were made of a chemical substance called Nitrate that required careful storage and adequate temperature, if not preserved in such a recommended way, then the film will have got damaged. The film stock of ‘Pyaasa’ was totally made of Nitrate, so that is the reason why restoration seems a little bit difficult.

This year the Venice International Film Festival will held on 2nd to 12th September 2015 and the classic section screening will be held on September 11 and 12 in the Sala Volpi auditorium. The Film Pyaasa charted to compete with 20 other language films selected in the classics section. Among 21 films, the best one film will honoured with the ‘Venice Classics Award’