Union I&B Minister Anurag ThakurThe world’s largest film restoration project is to come up at the National Film Archive of India (NFAI) here. The project, under the National Film Heritage Mission (NFHM), has been allotted ? 363 crore, said the Minister of Information & Broadcasting, Anurag Thakur, during his visit on Thursday.
Under the NFHM, approximately 2,200 films will undergo restoration. Additionally, there would be preservation processes of assessment of film condition, preventive conservation, and digitisation, with a total allocated budget of ? 597 crore.
The films chosen for the process were handpicked by language-wise committees consisting of filmmakers, documentary filmmakers, film historians, producers etc. These committees included illustrious filmmakers such as Aparna Sen, Shriram Raghavan, Anjali Menon, and Vetrimaaran. The NFAI has also restored 10 Satyajit Ray films, of which, Pratidwandi will premiere at the Cannes Classics section this year. Likewise, the restored version of G Aravindan’s 1978 Malayama film Thamp will be showcased at the Restoration World Premieres at Cannes by Film Heritage Foundation.
Among films to be restored are feature films such as ‘Neelakuyil’ (Malayalam) and ‘Do Aakhein Barah Haath’ (Hindi). The restoration process involves frame-to-frame digital, semi-automated manual picture and sound restoration from the best surviving source material.
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The source negative or print will be scanned at 4K to .dpx files, which will be then digitally restored. Scratches, dirt, and abrasions will be cleaned during the process. Sound damages such as pops, hisses, crackles and distortions will also be removed in a similar process. After restoration, the digital picture files will be colour-graded (DI process) and balanced to achieve the look of the film at the time of the original release.
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