The films for restoration by NFAI are selected by language-wise committees of filmmakers, film historians, producers like Aparna Sen, Sriram Raghavan, Anjali Menon and Vetrimaaran.
The films for restoration by NFAI are selected by language-wise committees of filmmakers, film historians, producers like Aparna Sen, Sriram Raghavan, Anjali Menon and Vetrimaaran.
Information and Broadcasting Minister Anurag Thakur said on Thursday that India has launched the world’s biggest film restoration project under which 2,200 films in different languages will be restored at a cost of Rs 363 crore.
After reviewing the work of the organization during his visit to Pune, Thakur said that the restoration project now awarded is about to start in full swing at the National Film Archive of India (NFAI).
The films for restoration have been selected by language-wise committees of filmmakers, film historians, producers such as Aparna Sen, Sriram Raghavan, Anjali Menon and Vetrimaaran, an official statement said.
“The National Film Heritage Mission, which is one of the largest film conservation missions in the world, includes assessment of the status of the film, preventive conservation and digitization with a total allocated budget of Rs 597 crore in addition to restoration and ongoing conservation processes. ” The minister said.
in the interim, NFAI reinstates 10 iconic Satyajit Ray films Which will be screened at various international film festivals.
Cannes has selected the remastered version of Ray’s classic ‘Riven’ to premiere in the Cannes Classics section later this month.
A restored version of G Aravindan’s 1978 Malayalam film Thump will be screened at the Restoration World Premiere in Cannes by the Film Heritage Foundation.
Apart from Satyajit Ray’s films, various feature films like ‘Neelkuyil’ (Malayalam) and ‘Do Aakhen Barah Haath’ (Hindi) will also be reinstated.
The restoration process includes frame-to-frame digital and semi-automated manual picture and sound restoration from the best surviving source materials.
The source negatives/prints will be scanned to 4K to .dpx files, which will then be digitally restored.
Damage including scratches, dirt and abrasions to every frame of the negative picture will be cleaned up during the restoration process.
Sound is also restored in a process similar to the picture restoration process and involves digitally removing the many pops, hiss, cracks and distortions on the sound negative.
After restoration, the digital picture files will be color graded (DI processed) and balanced to achieve the look of the film at the time of the original release.