Peter Brook‘s five-hour-plus film adaptation of “The Mahabharata” is set for a BFI Blu-ray release on Aug. 10, presented in high definition from a new 4K restoration of the 1989 production.
The release centres on the triptych version of the film, running 332 minutes, which sits between Brook’s three-hour cinema cut and the six-hour television version he shot concurrently. Based on the ancient Hindu epic, the film was originally produced by Brook with screenwriters Jean-Claude Carrière and Marie-Hélène Estienne, and features an international cast drawn from 16 nationalities.
A key addition to the disc is “My Father’s Legacy – Simon Brook on The Mahabharata,” a newly filmed 35-minute interview in which the director’s son reflects on his memories of the production, its cultural significance and his father’s legacy. Simon Brook also led the technical restoration of the film, which had largely disappeared from circulation after the original 35mm prints were lost. Working without an inventory, the team recovered camera negative for approximately 95% of the film from 3,451 scattered reels of negative and sound elements. The original scan was performed at 8K resolution – what Brook has described as a first for a European heritage film – generating 450 terabytes of data before being finished for the Blu-ray presentation.
