Filmworld
Satyajit Ray's masterpiece
Washington, April 23
Indian master filmmaker
Satyajit Ray's masterpiece "The Apu Trilogy" has been restored and will
be released in US theatres beginning May 8 by Janus Films, leading
distributor of classic foreign films.
Restoration of the trilogy
that helped bring India into the golden age of international art-house
cinema, was long thought to be impossible, after a fire severely damaged
the original negatives in 1993.
New technology made the
restoration possible from material salvaged by the Academy Film Archive
from whatever was left of the original negatives, according to a media
release.
The three films - "Pather Panchali" (Song Of The Little
Road), "Aparajito" (The Unvanquished) and "Apur Sansar" (The World Of
Apu) - will begin a US re-release in New York City on May 8.
It will be followed by releases in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Washington DC, Philadelphia, Boston, Detroit, and Houston.
The films with new subtitles will play at the country's top arthouse cinemas throughout the summer.
Based
on two books by Bibhutibhusan Banerjee, "The Apu Trilogy" follows one
indelible character, a free-spirited child in rural Bengal who matures
into an adolescent urban student and finally a sensitive man of the
world.
The films, shot over the course of five years and
featuring different actors playing the maturing Apu, are considered
essential works for any film lover.
Martin Scorsese called
watching the films "One of the great cinematic experiences of my life."
Akira Kurosawa said, "Never having seen a Satyajit Ray film is like
never having seen the sun or moon."
In 1993, a year after Ray won
the Honorary Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and
Sciences, a project was initiated to restore Ray's films, including "The
Apu Trilogy."
En route to Los Angeles, many of the negatives
were temporarily stored at London's Hendersons Film Laboratories. There,
a massive nitrate fire at the lab spread to the film vaults, and the
original negatives were feared lost forever.
The Criterion
Collection in association with the Academy Film Archive at The Academy
of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences teamed up with L'Immagine Ritrovata
in Bologna, one of the world's premiere restoration facilities.
Close
to a thousand hours of meticulous hand labour were spent to rehydrate
the brittle film, rebuild sprocket perforations on the sides of the film
and remove melted tape, glue and wax.
Using fine-grain masters
and duplicate negatives preserved by Janus Films, the Academy, and the
British Film Institute, suitable replacements were found for the
non-usable or missing sections of the original negatives.
In the
end, forty percent of "Pather Panchali", and more than sixty percent of
"Aparajito" were restored directly from the original negative.
The
restoration of "Apur Sansar" is comprised of a fine grain and a safety
dupe negative, as the original negative was too damaged by the fire to
be usable.
Over the course of six months of steady work, the Criterion Collection restoration lab handled the digital restoration.
Emphasis
was placed on retaining the look and character of the original
material, when necessary preferring to leave damage rather than
overprocess digital images that might lose the grain and feel of the
film.
Peter Becker, President of the Criterion Collection and
partner in Janus Films said, "This monumental restoration and national
re-release is the culmination of seven years of work by dozens of people
on three continents from the Academy Film Archive, the Cineteca di
Bologna and our own team at Criterion."
(Arun Kumar can be contacted at [email protected])