NEW DELHI: To celebrate the 100th birth anniversary of actor Karuna Banerjee, India International Centre is screening The Apu Trilogy – Pather Panchali, Aparajito and Apur Sansar – in collaboration with film enthusiasts Anil and Shampa Srivastava. The screening of Pather Panchali with English subtitles was held at CD Deshmukh Auditorium at the centre on Thursday.
Anil, who has been associated with the film society for long, says, “I have watched these movies over 100 times. But watching the blu-ray version by Criterion is a totally different experience. The copies are available online but are very poor quality prints because the negatives were burnt or lost. But The Criterion Collection has a created a re-mastered version. The way it does the restoration is amazing. The main purpose of this screening is to share the great restoration work with people.”
Considered among the best works in parallel cinema, the movies are based on two Bengali novels written by Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay. “Criterion is an American home video distribution company, which mainly focused on art films. They created a division called Criterion Classics, where they started doing restoration of films like a painting. Elements from different sources and prints are put together using digital techniques to get the best-quality print,” adds Srivastava, who under his company Open Health Systems Laboratory, is working on cancer research.
After every screening, there will be on-stage conversations with filmmaker Adoor Gopalakrishnan and film critic Samik Bandopadhyay. He says, “For this screening, we got permissions from the copyright owners – the government of West Bengal, Arora Film Corporation and Satyajit Ray Production. Criterion has rights to release DVDs in India but not for theatrical releases. Shampa and I are trying to connect them to other good Indian movies and restore them,” adds the cinema buff.
Aparajito: On December 20 6:30 pm
Apur Sansar: On December 21 6:30 pm
Where: CD Deshmukh hall, IIC
*Screening is open to all