The lights dim in PVR: Select City Walk at Saket. A familiar Hindi song begins, but something feels different this time. The image is sharper, the colours richer, the sound fuller. In the theatre, people lean forward—not just watching, but comparing. “It never looked this clear,” someone whispers. Another smiles, recognising a scene they last saw decades ago on a fuzzy television screen.
For many in the audience, this is not just a film screening of Pyaasa- the timeless Guru Dutt and Waheeda Rehman classic; it is a reunion with memory itself. Behind this transformation sits a largely invisible process, and one of its key figures is Abhishek Prasad, part of the third generation of the Prasad family, whose name has been intertwined with Indian cinema for over seven decades.
A legacy born in the lab
This story begins long before OTT platforms, 4K projectors or AI-assisted cleanup tools. The Prasad Group traces its roots to the 1950s, when Abhishek Prasad’s great-grandfather, L.V. Prasad was actively involved in film production and direction. He directed and produced the films Chhoti Behan and Sasural while among several other films in Hindi,Telugu and Tamil industry.
Back then, cinema was celluloid—physical, fragile, and unforgiving. When film labs at that time did not have adequate technology to process the negatives and prepare prints for distribution, the family stepped into the technical side of filmmaking. That decision led to the birth of Prasad Labs, which would go on to become one of south Asia’s most prominent film post-production laboratories.
Prasad Labs worked on some of the biggest films like Krrish from 1996 to 2006 requiring VFX, riding the industry’s first major technological shift. But the most consequential pivot came quietly in the mid-2000s.
When cinema stopped being disposable
“For a long time, the mindset was simple,” Abhishek Prasad explains. “Make a film, release it, move on.” Once a theatrical run ended, negatives were often forgotten, sometimes stored carelessly, sometimes discarded altogether. There was little perceived value beyond box-office returns. That began to change around 2006. Digital projection was emerging, film prints were becoming expensive and logistically impractical, and Hollywood had already started scanning and restoring its back catalogue. Prasad Labs began restoring a handful of films each year, initially working with archives and international studios. The real shift, however, came with the explosion of OTT platforms and online video consumption as the pandemic reshaped how audiences consumed and valued content.
Suddenly, old films weren’t liabilities, they were assets. Restoring intent, not reinventing it film restoration, Prasad insists, is not about creative reinterpretation. “Our job is to preserve the director and cinematographer’s original intent,” he says. “Not to improve it according to today’s taste.”
Legal verification is the first step of the process. Rights to older films are often fragmented, split across producers, financiers and heirs. Only after ownership is clear does the technical work begin. Negatives are physically inspected for damage. Some go straight to scanning; others require chemical treatment to slow deterioration caused by humidity or poor storage, conditions that can trigger the infamous “vinegar syndrome,” where film literally begins to dissolve. Once stabilised, negatives are scanned using high-end in-house scanners capable of capturing up to 14K resolution, far beyond today’s standard viewing formats.
Why so high? “Prasad says. “We don’t know what displays will look like 20 years from now, so we have a copy of the highest-resolution available.” From there, the real labour begins. Removing the first layer of dust, scratches and flicker, a process now increasingly done by AI, but human intervention remains crucial. AI, Prasad notes, can’t always tell the difference between dust and rain, or damage and deliberate grain. The average ballpark to restore an entire film takes up to 5,000 man-hours, with teams working frame by frame.
Restoring, an emotion
What has made restoration commercially viable in India is not just technology, but emotion. Re-releases—especially in the south—have become events. Fan clubs organise screenings around star birthdays and anniversaries, filling theatres for films that once ran for a week or less.
Producers, too, are seeing value in what once sat forgotten in vaults. A restored film can be licensed to streaming platforms, re-released theatrically, or mined for individual songs and scenes that attract millions of views online. Even films that failed on first release sometimes find cult status years later. Recent projects underline this shift. Prasad Labs has restored international classics like Lawrence of Arabia and The Red Shoes, along with numerous Indian titles, including films by Shyam Benegal's Manthan and Satyajit Ray's Aparajito, Jana-Aranya and several other films. Their work has screened at global festivals, including Cannes Film Festival, placing Indian restoration practices on the world stage.
30 movies in the pipeline
Prasad is realistic about the future. Restoration, he says, is ultimately finite. Once films are properly digitised and archived, demand will stabilise. But for now, the momentum is strong, with 30 movies in the pipeline each month driven by monetisation, nostalgia and a growing awareness of cinema, not just as entertainment but as cultural memory.
Back in the theatre, the end credits roll. People don’t rush out, staying seated they absorb the experience. The film may be decades old, but tonight it felt alive again, rescued from decay, returned to the present. And in that quiet act of preservation, India’s cinematic past is finding its way into the future.