Bollywood DoP, Absent From Cannes, Talks Ray Restoration
NDTV
Pratidwandi, made in 1970, has resurfaced at the 75th Cannes Film Festival in the form of a restored print
Satyajit Ray's Pratidwandi (The Adversary), made in 1970 with Dhritiman Chatterjee in the lead role of a disillusioned job-seeker in a rapidly changing city, has resurfaced at the 75th Cannes Film Festival in the form of a restored print. The film played to a packed Salle Bunuel as part Cannes Classics. Neither the producer of the film Purnima Dutta nor the man who supervised the restoration project, Mumbai-based cinematographer Sudeep Chatterjee, were at hand to enlighten the audience about the restoration project.
On a telephone call from Mumbai, Chatterjee says: "It was a very, very exciting job for me. I was extremely honoured to be part of the restoration project." The restoration of Pratidwandi and many other early Ray films has been undertaken under the aegis of the National Film Heritage Mission of the Information and Broadcasting Ministry.
Chatterjee reveals: "In all it was a two-month process, but for me it involved 12 to 15 days of full-time work." "Pratidwandi is such an unusual Ray film, very angsty and provocative. It also offers such a fantastic representation of the Kolkata of 50 years ago," he adds.
That is exactly the thought that Cannes Classics programmer Gerald Duchaussoy expressed a day earlier in an informal chat with this correspondent.
