Restoring Manthan: Shyam Benegal’s original negative had fungus, green mold; needed permission from 5,00,000 farmers

Dungarpur, a filmmaker himself, says, “Shyam Benegal was one of the very first filmmakers to donate to us his entire archival material — photographs, lobby cards, scripts, and the 35 mm prints when we started the foundation. So, since then we have been thinking about restoring this film but there were technical challenges with the print or the negative. One of the biggest challenges was that this film was produced by 5,00,000 farmers. How are you going to get permission to actually speak to the farmers after almost 48 years? But I must say, the Gujarat Milk Federation, which we now call Amul, was very supportive. Benegal wrote a letter to them that the film needs to be restored and they came forward.”

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Technical challenges: There was green mold, fungus, flicker problems in the original 35 mm. The colours had faded and sound was lost.

Shivendra Singh Dungarpur revealed that when they started the process of restoring Manthan, they discovered that the original camera negative which was at the National Film Archive of India (NFAI) was damaged. “There was green molds, fungus and flicker problems. The colours had faded and there was no sound negative as the film was dubbed. So you don’t have location sound. Also, the sound negative didn’t survive. We had to find a lot of other material to put this film together,” he says.

“It almost took us a year and a half to work on restoration in Bologna (Italy) and Prasad Lab in Chennai. We used to constantly show Govind Nihlani and Shyam Benegal the progress. They had a lot of challenges when they shot the film because it was shot in different stocks, Gevacolor, Eastman, Kodak. There was an embargo on getting stock at the time and the printing was done on ORWO (traditionally known for black-and-white film products), which was a very inferior stock. I remember Mr Benegal telling me that whatever Mr Nihlani shot, we were expecting the results to be of that nature. He shot it so beautifully as they were shooting in a village with top sun and there was this rawness that he tried to capture in that. But, it didn’t happen. He feels that now the restored print is very close to their vision or what they had imagined at the time,” Dungarpur gleefully shares.

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Director Shyam Benegal and DOP Govind Nihlani on the sets of Manthan. (Photo: Film Heritage Foundation)

Why was the original print in such a bad shape in the first place?

When asked why Manthan was in such a bad state in the first place, Dungarpur says, “It wasn’t in great condition even when the film was deposited to NFAI. It depends where they had stored the film. The archive was trying to keep it in the best possible condition and I think, over time, if these films are not looked after properly, or not kept in the correct conditions, they are very sensitive to many factors.”

Manthan stills before and after restoration. (Photos: Film Heritage Foundation)

He adds, “It was kept in Mumbai for a long period of time and here the conditions are very humid. Unless it is kept in a facility with proper air conditioning or humidity control, then it is going to deteriorate because it is celluloid. Not only fungus or mold, there were spots on Smita Patil’s face. Restoration can only get a certain amount of actual tonality of colours and rectify it. The whole beauty of restoration is to keep the grains of the 35 mm. We didn’t meddle with the grains because that’s what gives the film that sensibility, that feeling that you are watching a film of that period. So we have tried to bring back as close as Benegal and Nihalani had actually imagined the film to be. They worked very closely on the restoration. Because the film was faded, it has flicker problems. We actually looked at the stills of the film which Benegal has donated to the Film Heritage Foundation. We found some of the stills which were absolutely intact with the actual colours.”

 

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Bollywood stays away from restoring Indian classics while Hollywood extends support

Shivendra Singh Dungarpur shares that Hollywood filmmakers like Martin Scorsese and George Lucas have been actively supporting his foundation’s efforts in restoring Indian classics. However, there is still a lack of contribution from the Indian film fraternity.

He says, “We are a foundation, so we are not for profit and we can only do that much because we don’t have that kind of financial resources. We try and raise money. What the Film Heritage Foundation has been doing is trying to preserve films of our regional cinema because we truly believe that the true cinema of India is in the regional. We recently restored two Malayalam films Thamp and Kummatty, then we did Isanou, Manthan, then Maya Miriga, the Odiya film. We did Ghatashraddha which is a Kannada film.”

“It’s not easy but we get some support from some big Hollywood filmmakers. Martin Scorsese is partnering with us on many of our projects. He is backing us on Ghatashraddha, so is George Lucas. There is a (Satyajit) Ray film Aranyer Din Ratri, which Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg’s Film Foundation is doing. Having said that, there has to be more participation from the people in the Indian film industry. We are restoring films of various producers, whether it is Sholay or the other big films, but it is always a challenge to be able to restore regional cinema or films that are normally not backed or almost forgotten. We are trying to see how the Film Heritage Foundation can sort of balance that aspect and bring back that cinema to the public because that cinema is so important socially and politically as it reflects that time, that change, that essence of the true culture of India,” he concludes.

Manthan will be released in cinemas all over India on June 1.