EVERGREEN MOMENTS: Uttam Kumar and Suchitra Sen in a scene from Saptapadi

After Satyajit Ray, Soumitra Chatterjee, Mrinal Sen and Ritwik Ghatak, it?s the turn of the evergreen romantic couple of Bengali cinema ? Uttam Kumar and Suchitra Sen ? to find a place in the film archives at Nandan.

On the instruction of chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, the West Bengal Film Development Corporation (WBFDC) has taken up a Rs 50-lakh project to reprint some hit Bengali films of the Sixties and the Seventies, starring Uttam Kumar. Most of these had Suchitra Sen starring with him.

?There is no denying that Uttam-Suchitra starrers are still hot favourites among Bengalis, either in cinemas or on TV. To keep the films alive for a long time, we have taken the initiative to reprint the films,?? said WBFDC managing director K.P. Pal.

He said initially, 20 films ? most of them with Uttam-Suchitra as the lead pair ? will be reprinted and later the number will be increased. There is a plan to reprint some more films, too.

?We had appealed to all film distributors and producers to deposit the prints, either in original or copies, of Uttam Kumar paired with either Suchitra Sen or Supriya Devi. We have received a good response from them and have already obtained prints of some films. We will make new prints by applying modern technology. We will also make the films available in DVD format,?? Pal said.

READYTO REPRINT

Harano Sur Uttar Falguni Har Mana Har Kamallata Bandhu Shilpi Chhadmabeshi Kokhono Megh Dhanyi Meye Antony Firingi Baghbandi Khela Bhrantibilas Stree Saptapadi Jiban Mrityu

The state-owned film laboratory, Rupayan, has state-of-the-art facilities for film development and editing. ?We will repair and reprint the films in our own laboratory,?? Pal said.

The manager of the film laboratory, N.S. Pillai, said the original prints of a number of hit films of Uttam Kumar are now badly damaged and cannot be screened in cinemas.

?It is a tough task to restore them and make the films fit for exhibition. However, our film experts and chemists are making every effort to restore them. We have reprinted two films by restoring them as a test case and are satisfied with the results. Over Rs 1 lakh will be spent to repair each film,?? Pillai said.

?We expect to repair and reprint at least a dozen films within this festive season, so that these can be exhibited in cinemas and on TV,?? he said.

According to officers in the information and cultural affairs department, the government decision to preserve Uttam-Suchitra films comes in the wake of criticism from the film buffs that Uttam Kumar is being grossly neglected. Though the government has set up a film archive, Uttam Kumar?s films have found no place in it.