Athidhi, the 2007 Telugu film starring Mahesh Babu and Amrita Rao in the lead, is scheduled for re-release in theatres on May 29, to mark yesteryear actor Krishna’s birth anniversary on May 31. The film directed by Surender Reddy has been digitally restored and remastered at Prasad Corp.Athidi is the latest in the long list of older films to be digitally restored and remastered for a theatrical re-release. In recent years, Prasad Corp has worked on several films, including Telugu hits such as Murari, Athadu, Gabbar Singh, Mass and Indra. Abhishek Prasad, chief technology officer of Prasad Corp, attributes the growing interest in digitising and restoring older films to the renewed revenue stream through digital streaming and theatrical re-releases.“Earlier, monetisation options for a film were limited to theatrical release and television satellite rights. Digital viewership growing manifold opened up new revenue opportunities,” says Abhishek.
Some of the earlier Telugu films restored by Prasad Corp.
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Post lockdowns, when the audience was still reluctant to return to theatres, bringing back older films helped kindle nostalgia-driven interest, sometimes driven by fan clubs. It also encouraged a generation that had grown up watching these films to relive those memories with the younger generation. This was evident in how family audiences visited theatres to soak in the humour of director Vijaya Bhaskar’s 2002 hit Manmadhudu, featuring Nagarjuna Akkineni and Sonali Bendre, during its re-release. It was similar during the re-release of Chiranjeevi-starrer Indra and Jagadeka Veerudu Athiloka Sundari, which co-starred Sridevi.Classics with a new lookPrasad Corp has also restored some of director-producer Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s Hindi films such as Parineeta, 3 Idiots, 1942 - A Love Story and Munnabhai MBBS.Restoration efforts have also been taken up by studios that have extensive post production facilities. For instance, Ram Gopal Varma’s Shiva was restored at Annapurna Studios, Hyderabad, and re-released last year. All this helped to address a long-standing concern in film circles about preserving older titles. While some negatives have been carefully stored in airconditioned environs, several have been reportedly missing or lying unattended in cans in warm, humid rooms. “If the original camera negative is in a cold storage facility, it can last for hundreds of years,” says Prasad.He reveals that Prasad Laboratories, being a forerunner in film processing and post production for decades, stored copies of films it had worked on at their facilities in different cities across India. “Our repository is huge, I cannot put a number on it,” says Abhishek.Most of their archives are now at the cold storage facilities set up by the National Film Archives of India (NFAI) and Film Heritage Foundation (FHF), after obtaining the consent of film producers. In the last few years, the National Film Development Corporation (NFDC) along with NFAI and FHF have also been digitising older films, some of which have been showcased at international film festivals.
