Original camera negative of Paar missing as NFAI restores classics

As the National Film Archive of India (NFAI) attempts to restore thousands of defining films in major Indian languages, the original camera negative of Goutam Ghose’s National Award-winning film, Paar, has gone missing. According to the director, the negative was kept in Chennai’s Gemini Labs, which breathed its last in 2015. He fears that several other original negatives of his films and others’ might have been misplaced too.The original camera negative, as per experts, provides scope for the best quality digitisation and restoration.
“We worked on celluloid till 2011-12 and soon after that, film-processing labs started shutting down. As a result, the negatives were not taken care of. Paar was in Gemini Labs, and now we cannot trace it. I know a print is available, but that’s not the best possible quality. I am still looking for my Yatra and Gudia. I know Dakhal, Padma Nadir Majhi and a few other films are in the West Bengal government vaults,” said the filmmaker.
Meanwhile, Prakash Magdum, the director of NFAI, said that their primary aim is to get hold of the camera negative. “If we can’t get that, we will explore the next best available options. If there are several prints, we will check all the available options and mix and match the best prints to scan and digitise,” he said. Paar won three National Film Awards – Best Feature Film in Hindi, Best Actor (Naseeruddin Shah) and Best Actress (Shabana Azmi).
In late December last year, the NFAI director came down to Kolkata to get the original camera negative of Satyajit Ray’s Pratidwandi from its producer, Purnima Dutta. He also got the negatives of Sonar Kella, Hirak Rajar Deshe, Ray’s documentary on his father Sukumar Ray and Goutam Ghose’s documentary on Satyajit Ray from the West Bengal government, which has produced all of these films.
“Since it’s Ray’s centenary year, our aim was to restore his films on priority. Next in focus were the National Award-winning films,” said Magdum.
Talking about the ambitious restoration project that has been going on for a while, the NFAI director said, “We aimed to finish it in another couple of years. But with the pandemic, achieving that target seems difficult. There are more than 5,000 films, documentaries and short films to restore. Even as I speak, films are getting scanned, and the process is in full swing.”
Talking about the restoration of Satyajit Ray’s films, Sandip Ray said, “NFAI had a detailed discussion with me. In fact, I have seen one of the rough restorations of Sonar Kella, and I liked it. It will go through a lot more work, though. While the NFAI has been restoring some of Ray’s films, especially those produced by the West Bengal government, his other films are being restored by The Academy Film Archive and The Criterion. Most of his black and white films have already been restored by the Academy Film Archive.”