Cult classics go digital

Cult films such as Kundan Shah’s Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro (1983) and Ketan Mehta’s Mirch Masala (1987), among numerous others, are set to get a new avatar soon. The National Film Development Corporation (NFDC) has picked a few classic films for digital restoration...

Cult films such as Kundan Shah’s Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro (1983) and Ketan Mehta’s Mirch Masala (1987), among numerous others, are set to get a new avatar soon. The National Film Development Corporation (NFDC) has picked a few classic films for digital restoration, which involves bettering the sound as well as the video quality of the movies.

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Six such titles will be made available to audiences this month on home video. Other films, which have also been amped up, include the multi-ensemble project, Party (1984) directed by Govind Nihalani, Shyam Benegal’s Suraj Ka Satvan Ghoda (1992) and Dharavi (1991), which has been helmed by Sudhir Mishra.

Under the ‘Cinemas of India’ endeavour, NFDC plans to make these films available to audiences in better conditions. Apart from the Hindi movies mentioned above, the corporation will also release re-mastered films of other regional languages. At the same time, Rajesh Das, a senior official from NFDC adds: “Our endeavour has always been to be able to restore and protect cinema of all languages. With this title, we will be reaching out to newer (and younger) audiences with cinema that could have been lost in today’s day-and-age. We will release such packages regularly.

The first lot, of course, will come out in February.”