Original negative of Kasaravalli’s ‘Dweepa’ was left to rot for six years for want of ₹30,000

The negative was stored in the lab, which had asked for ₹30,000 as a one-time fee to release it from its storage.

“When the lab was shut down, it instructed the producer of the film to collect the negative after paying the fee,” Kasaravalli told PTI.

‘Process got complicated’

But Girish Kasaravalli said the process got complicated as the producers of the film, Soundarya and her brother Amarnath passed away in a tragic aircraft crash in 2004, and Soundarya’s husband, GS Raghu, who now has the rights to the film, is not a film professional and has no interest in the movie.

“Also, we were in a dilemma. The National Film Archive of India (NFAI) had stopped accepting films for storage because it was going to shut down (in March 2022, NFAI merged with the National Film Development Corporation). Even if we had gotten the negative, there was no place to store it. Private archives charge a monthly rent for storage, but who will foot the bill?” he added.

On 4 March, during a master class session on Dweepa, for the 15th Bengaluru International Film Festival (BIFFes), GS Bhaskar, a noted cinematographer who had worked with Kasaravalli on his film on Gandhi and Kurmavatara, informed those gathered that Prasad Lab has now agreed to release the film.

The session was moderated by Bhaskar and saw the technicians of Dweepa, cinematographer HM Ramachandra Halkere, who had won the national award for Best Cinematography for the film and art director Shashidhar Adapa, as well as Kasaravalli, discuss its making in detail.

“I was just informed about it, I guess it may take about two weeks to finalise all the formalities,” Bhaskar told PTI after the session.

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‘Half the bridge crossed’

“Now, we need to figure out the extent of the damage to the negative and restore it. Soundarya’s husband is willing to give the rights of the film to anyone willing to restore it,” Girish Kasaravalli told PTI.

This is just half the bridge crossed, Halkere pointed out.

“Right now, in India, the Mumbai-based Film Heritage Foundation (FHF) is the go-to organisation for restoring damaged films. But it is for them to decide whether they want to restore Dweepa or not,” said Halkere.

When contacted, founder-director of FHF, Shivendra Singh Dungarpur, a filmmaker himself, said if films by Kasaravalli require restoration or preservation, FHF will do it without a second thought.

“This is at the core of what we do at FHF we look for films that are invaluable but are lost somehow, and preserve and restore them. We also have a temperature and humidity-controlled vault where films can be stored. Normally, say if Farhan Akhtar wants to use our services, we will charge him, of course. But if it is Kasaravalli’s films, we will do everything we can to improve public access to those gems, even if we are not going to be paid for it,” Dungarpur told PTI over the phone.

He also pointed out that FHF has already committed itself to digitally restoring Kasaravalli’s Ghatashraddha (1977).

FHF is teaming up with Martin Scorsese and George Lucas to digitally restore Ghatashraddha as part of its World Cinema Project, founded by Scorsese and funded by Lucas, he said.

“The digital restoration of Ghatashraddha will be done at L’Immagine Ritrovate in Bologna, Italy from the original camera negative preserved at NFAI,” said Kasaravalli.

Restoration works

As for Dweepa, first must start by restoring the damage done to the original camera negative, added Girish Kasaravalli, who has won 14 national awards.

The filmmaker estimates that even a partial restoration will cost anything between ₹2 lakh and ₹5 lakh.

Dungarpur said one of FHF’s recent projects involved the restoration of the Odia film, Maya Miriga by Nirad Mohapatra, which too was languishing at the warehouse of Prasad Lab.

“They had removed 12 reels of the 16 mm original camera negative from the lab storage for non-payment of dues. You know, Maya Miriga is the most celebrated film in the history of Odia cinema,” said Dungarpur.

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Restoration of Maya Miriga

According to him, the retrieved reels had deteriorated so badly that it took them several months of manual patching up before they could be sent to Bologna for scanning.

“The reels had broken perforations, shrinkage, mould, halos, strong base distortion and colour fading. It was so bad that when scanned, the image was blurred, had scratches, tears, dust and dirt, and frequent and long-lasting vertical lines and halos. We had to restore some portions using the two 35 mm prints that were stored at NDFC-NFAI, but they were bad too faces were blurred and the film was grainy. We had to make do with whatever we had. In all, it took us three years,” said Dungarpur.

Whether Dweepa will face a similar fate will be known only after assessing the damage done to the negative, said Kasaravalli.

“But of course whoever is restoring it will be doing it for the love of cinema, because no one is going to make any money from Dweepa anymore,” he added.

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