FILM HERITAGE FOUNDATION RETURNS TO CANNES CLASSIC WITH THE WORLD PREMIERE

FILM HERITAGE FOUNDATION RETURNS TO CANNES CLASSIC WITH THE WORLD PREMIERE OF ITS RESTORATION OF ARIBAM SYAM SHARMA’S ACCLAIMED MANIPURI FILM “ISHANOU” (1990)!

Delhi-Mumbai, In keeping with its policy to restore and give new life to forgotten gems of India’s film heritage, Film Heritage Foundation has restored the revered Manipuri filmmaker Aribam Syam Sharma’s award-winning film “Ishanou” (1990). The restoration has been selected for a red-carpet world premiere at the prestigious Cannes Classic section of the Cannes Film Festival 2023.

SHIVENDRA SINGH DUNGARPUR, DIRECTOR, FILM HERITAGE FOUNDATION

“It is fantastic that “Ishanou” is returning to Cannes in all its glory, 32 years after it was screened at the Cannes Film Festival in 1991. Film Heritage Foundation is so proud that our restoration of “Ishanou” has been selected for a world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival 2023 and that we are returning to Cannes for the second year in a row after the success of our restoration of Aravindan Govindan’s film “Thamp” that premiered at Cannes last year. It has been a challenging journey, but the result has been more than worth it. The world-class restoration will remind the world of the work of a great artist like Aribam Syam Sharma, and give new life to an almost forgotten gem of India’s film heritage from Manipur.

The first time I saw “Ishanou” was in April 2021 when I was in Imphal, Manipur with the Film Heritage Foundation team for a very special project to help the Manipur Government set up a film archive there. One evening in Imphal, I attended a screening of “Ishanou”. I was excited as they were screening a 35 mm print of the film, which has become such a rarity these days. I also had the privilege to meet the director, Aribam Syam Sharma, a doyen of Manipuri cinema and a Renaissance man.

When the film began, I could see the print was not in the best of conditions with scratches and flicker and uneven colours that disturbed the eye. Yet the beauty of the film and the simple yet powerful narrative rooted in the unique culture of Manipur, transcended the distortions that marred the artistry of the imagery playing out on the big screen and I was just mesmerized by the poignancy of the story of a young mother torn between her family and the call of the divine. I was determined that “Ishanou” must be restored to its former glory and that the world should be reminded of a filmmaker who had put Manipuri cinema on the world map.”

SHRI ARIBAM SYAM SHARMA, PRODUCER AND DIRECTOR OF “ISHANOU”

I am so glad that Film Heritage Foundation chose “Ishanou” to be restored. It has been a learning experience for me to understand the meticulous process of restoring this film like a work of art, a process that has taken almost a year. I have seen the time and painstaking effort put in by Shri Shivendra Singh Dungarpur of Film Heritage Foundation to work closely with me to ensure that the film is restored keeping in mind my original vision. It has been a journey of discovery to work with Film Heritage Foundation and to see my film restored so beautifully and respectfully and given a new life after over thirty years.

“Ishanou” came into being organically and through a natural progression of events. When I look back, I feel Ishanou happened at the right time, even though it was after a gap of ten years since my last feature film “Imagi Ningthem”. M.K. Binodini Devi was keen to write a screenplay based on the life of the Maibis and I had already done a mammoth documentation project on the Lai-Haraoba which gave me the confidence to film “Ishanou”

This extraordinary pull or quiet inner urge of the chosen one to abandon the home and immerse oneself in the Maibi culture may seem bizarre, but it is very real. And in this tragic sacrifice lies the sublime art of performance – song and dance attuned to elevate souls beyond the mundane. A chosen one undergoes extraordinary experiences and the experiences shown in the film are based on experiences related by the Maibis to M.K. Binodini Devi. The music that I have used in Ishanou is the traditional music of Manipur, the creators of which have been long forgotten with the passage of time but which has become a common treasure of Manipur. Perhaps, Manipuri culture is the only culture where a whole philosophy of genesis is propagated purely through the performing arts of Lai Haraoba. This unique aspect of Manipuri culture is the mystical canvas against which the human tragedy of the chosen one plays out.

THE RESTORATION PROCESS

The restoration was a challenging process that took a year. The source film element used for the restoration was the original camera negative on 16 mm that was preserved at the National Film Archive of India (NFAI). When Film Heritage Foundation conservators checked the negative, they realized it was not in good condition. The negative had vinegar syndrome decay on certain reels, mould and warping, broken perforations, scratches, halos on the emulsion and base distortion. Film Heritage Foundation conservators worked tirelessly to repair the negative before it could be scanned at L’Immagine Ritrovata, Bologna, using a wet-gate scanner.

The real challenge was the use of portions of inter-negative in the original camera negative which resulted in wide variations in the image quality, making it very grainy in parts and not matching the other portions of the film. Additionally, there was no sound negative so we had to work on the sound from the two 35 mm prints lying with Aribam Syam Sharma. The sound design in this film is so important paradoxically because of the details in the quietness of the film as well as, of course, the music composed by Aribam Syam Sharma. The film had been shot on 16 mm on a low budget in fluctuating available light conditions as a result of which there were focus and lighting issues that impacted the image.

As a result of the challenges arising from the poor condition of the source material, hours of meticulous and painstaking manual work went into the digital restoration, clean-up, managing the grain and in particular the colour correction of the film -  a process that took months and needed constant coordination between Shivendra Singh Dungarpur in Mumbai, Aribam Syam Sharma in Manipur and the lab technicians in Bologna. The filmmaker was consulted and gave inputs throughout the restoration process and he worked on the subtitling of the film himself.