A scene from G Aravindan's Thampu.
Credit: Film Heritage Foundation, Mumbai
Bengaluru: Cinephiles were welcomed with the restored version of film auteur G Aravindan’s Thampu (The Circus Tent) on the second day of the Bengaluru International Film Festival (BIFFes) here. There were definitely no Monday morning blues for those attending the festival at Orion Mall.
Restored by Film Heritage Foundation (FHF), Mumbai, the 1978 film looked fresh and was a treat on the big screen.
The 4K restoration of Thampu took a tedious eight months, Shivendra Singh Dungarpur, the director and the brain behind FHF had once mentioned in an interview.
The restoration took place at Prasad Studios, Chennai and Cineteca di Bologna, Italy. It was a collective effort between FHF, Prasad Corporation and Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project.
The Malayalam film was digitally cleaned and repaired before premiering at the Cannes Film Festival, 2022.
“Thampu is an important film in Indian new wave cinema. Very few have watched it on the big screen. The restoration work is clearly very good and it was a great experience. It was good to watch a restored print instead of the bad print that was available,” said film academician and writer Basav Biradar.
Similarly, Aribam Syam Sharma’s Manipuri film Ishanou (1990), Nirad Mohapatra’s Odia film Maya Miriga (1984), Aravindan’s Kummatty (1979) and Girish Kasaravalli’s Kannada film Ghatashraddha (1977) were restored by FHF and will be screened at the festival.
Also screening is M S Sathyu’s 1974 film Garm Hava, restored in 2014 by Filmlab in Mumbai and Deluxe Laboratories in Los Angeles.
Kannada Cinema Day
BIFFes every year, on March 3, celebrates World Kannada Cinema Day. The first Kannada talkie film Sati Sulochana was released on this day in 1934. It was directed by Y V Rao and written by Bellave Narahari Shastri. Actor Tripuramba played Sulochana and M V Subbaiah Naidu played her husband and son of Ravana, Indrajit.
Lakshminarayana Shastri and Madhukar Rao, grandchildren of Narahari Shastri and Y V Rao, were present at the event and spoke about their grandfathers.
Senior journalist Gangadhar Mudaliar said, “When we speak about the legendary actor, we usually talk about his role in Sati Sulochana. It is equally important to talk about Naidu’s portrayals in Bhakta Prahlada and Vasantasena.”
Actor Srujan Lokesh, Subbaiah Naidu’s grandson, expressed his displeasure about how his grandfather and the film was remembered only on March 3 every year.
“What are we as a society giving back to Naidu’s contribution? Have we made a memorial for him or named a road after him?,” he said.
Festival ambassador Kishore Kumar G, speaking on the occasion, quoted Babasaheb Ambedkar and said, “It is not possible to make history, if we forget history.”
“There is a lot to learn from history. Having said that, we cannot be just emotional about the past, we must also address the questions posing the film industry today,” he said.
Kishore also spoke about the many children and women being killed in Gaza and said, “About 90 years ago, we made a film (Sati Sulochana), about a woman’s perspective on war. We have still remained as a patriarchal society, but I feel very proud that a film like this was made back then.”
Kishore released five books on Kannada Cinema published by Karnataka Chalanachitra Academy. Karnad Kaleidoscope by senior journalist Muralidhar Khajane, Kannada Chitrarangada Nagavinyasa by N S Sridhar Murthy, Kannada Cinema Janapada Haadi by A N Prahlad Rao, Kannada Cinema Pouranika Vaibhava by D D P Satish Chandra and Kannada Cinema - Aitihasika Nelegattu by J M Prahlad.