PVR's Director Rare to re-release restored version of Satyajit Ray's Mahanagar on 18 April

PVR’s Director’s Rare is all set to release Satyajit Ray’s 1963 classic Mahanagar in eight cities including Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai on 18 April in a restored format. Mahanagar that starred Madhabi Mukherjee in the lead is the story of a housewife who challenges her traditionalist family by getting a job, has been digitally restored and is set to re-release after 50 years. In a nutshell, the film charts the emerging class of women who became bread earners to support life in a big city despite facing resistance from the traditional structure. Mahanagar has been restored by Kamal Bansal of RDB whose father R D Bansal happened to be Ray’s longtime producer. Divulging that they had restored all the six films produced by them RD Bansal’s granddaughter Varsha observed, “We first thought about restoring the films in 2011. There was a Ray festival in at that time and there was a huge audience but the prints were not in a Locarno good condition, there were scratches and the colour had changed. The negatives kept on the analogue print were in a bad shape.” “It was a difficult decision to take because lot of money was involved but we felt we had a responsibility towards Ray’s fans and cine-lovers. The restoration work on each film cost around Rs 20 lakh,” she added. Currently Varsha overlooks the re-marketing of the films post restoration. “We started the process in 2012 with about 300 technicians on all the six films. It is a frame by frame restoration and any mark or tear was corrected manually. Mahanagar will release first followed by Charulata, Nayak, Kapurush Mahapurush and Jai Baba Felunath. Sanjeev Kumar Bijli, JMD, PVR Limited said that they decided to release the classic as it would give Ray’s audiences a rare access to the film on the big screen. RDB has already tied up with Criterian, an American company who have come out with the DVDs and Blu-ray discs of the film.