August 9, 2001

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT:  Leslie Unger - (310) 247-3000

Beverly Hills, CA - The restoration of Satyajit Ray's "Seemabadha" (1971) has been completed by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Academy Film Archive, in conjunction with the Satyajit Ray Society in Calcutta, India. This is the eleventh Ray title to be restored as part of an Academy program dedicated to insuring the preservation and restoration of as much as possible of the output of the master filmmaker's forty-year career.

"Seemabadha" is the second film in Ray's "City Trilogy." The story focuses on the rise of an executive, Shyamalendu Chatterjee, up the corporate ladder at an English fan manufacturing company.

The restoration of "Seemabadha" began in earnest in January 2000. The film's original black-and-white camera negative and soundtrack negative were provided to the Academy Film Archive from the film's original producers through the Ray Society, and a search was conducted for a color sequence which appeared in the original release prints of the film but was missing from most prints made subsequent to that release.

"Near the beginning of the film, the main character, Chatterjee, attends a screening of a commercial for his company's ceiling fans," explained Michael Pogorzelski, Director of the Academy Film Archive. "It is about one minute long and was simply deleted from many prints made after the film's original release. In fact, one print we found in distribution in North America was not only missing the color sequence, but the entire reel the sequence appeared in."

Ultimately, an interpositive of the color sequence was recovered in India and used to create a new color negative of the sequence. The scene was then hand-spliced into every new print of "Seemabadha," just as it would have been in the film's original release prints.

The color sequence was but one challenge in the restoration process. According to Pogorzelski, the climate conditions of India are among the worst for film storage. "Acetate films need to be stored in cool, dry conditions. The climate in India is the opposite: warm and humid."

Long-term storage of film in India often results in the growth of mold spores, which feed on the gelatins in the film emulsion, then grow and die. The dead spores can be removed, but the picture or sound information which was contained on the film is altered permanently. "There often is nothing left beneath the mold," says Pogorzelski.

In the case of the soundtrack, the original film elements and a print that had been recovered were the primary sources. The areas which contained dropouts or missing information were filled in from alternate sources or restored using digital technology. A new soundtrack was then re-recorded and married to the new, completely restored picture elements.

Professor Dilip Basu of the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the head administrator of the Satyajit Ray Film and Study Collection, approved the new English sub-titles created for the restored film. Basu has been an invaluable collaborator on the Ray Preservation Project and has consulted on all of the films thus far completed.

Since the Ray Preservation Project was begun in 1992, the following titles have been completed (in order of their original release date): "Pather Panchali" (1955), "Aparajito" (1956), "Jalsaghar" (1958), "Apur Sansar" (1959), "Devi" (1960), "Teen Kanya" (1961), "Monihara" (1961), "Mahanaghar" (1963), "Charlulata" (1964), and "Jana Aranya" (1976), also part of the "City Trilogy." Next to be tackled is "Abhijan" (1961). New prints struck as a result of the project are deposited at the Ray Study Center in Santa Cruz and the Academy Film Archive, which makes them available for screening at film events around the world. Most recently, the Sydney Film Festival in Australia in June featured the Academy's prints of Ray's Apu Trilogy ("Pather Panchali," "Aparajito," and "Apur Sansar").