A still from Runumi

Jan. 8: Here’s good news for the Assamese film industry, as the country celebrates 100 years of Indian cinema.

The National Film Archives of India (NFAI) has digitally restored an Assamese film made in 1952, whose only print was missing for over 45 years, till it was recovered from a village in Assam in March 2010.

The film, Runumi, written and directed by writer and Xattriya dance exponent late Suresh Chandra Goswami, has undergone digital audio and video restoration after a painstaking process of manual cleaning at the restoration laboratory.

NFAI, which spent around Rs 6.5 lakh in the restoration, has also done the English subtitling of the film.

A small clip of the restored version of the film is available on YouTube.

The film, based on Goswami’s stage adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s play, The Warriors of Helgeland, was the 9th film to be made in Assamese language.

The songs of the movie, sung by Ivy Baruah, Sewali Sarma, Swarna Devi and Prafulla Baruah, were popular in its time.

It had music by Darpa Sarma, father of Jitu of the famed Jitu-Tapan duo, and cinematography by, among others, Nalin Duarah, who had made his debut with this film.

While it is believed that the film was “banned” by the Assam government for unknown reasons even while it was running in the cinemas in several Upper Assam towns, there is no official record of the ban.

It was around 1967 that Goswami’s brother-in-law, late Lakshmi Borthakur, had taken the only print of the film for screening in the tea gardens near Biswanath Chariali, and since then it had been lying at his residence.

Goswami himself never followed up the matter to get the only print back, and there was no trace of the negative of the film.

After Goswami passed away in 1984, there was virtually no possibility of finding out the whereabouts of the print.

However, around 2008, Goswami’s only daughter Dolly Borpujari happened to rely purely on guess work to enquire with her aunt’s family in Biswanath Chariali, and after several follow-ups, her cousins Bhabani and Amiya Borthakur informed her in early 2010 that the print had been found lying in a metal trunk in their house.

In March 2010, the print was sent to NFAI for restoration and preservation and it took over two years of painstaking work to get the major part of the film back in shape.

The total number of frames that were worked upon was 1,31,061, about 91 minutes in length, with 11 reels scanned and restored, out of the 13 reels originally present in the title.

The reels numbered 08 and 09 could not be scanned, as they had deteriorated and decomposed beyond recovery.