Full house at special premiere of restored 'Manthan'

Mumbai, Jun 2 (PTI) A special premiere of the restored version of "Manthan", the 1976 classic by Shyam Benegal, opened to a packed house here with several cinema personalities, including the veteran director and film's cinematographer Govind Nihalani, attending the event.

"Manthan", financed by 5 lakh farmers of Gujarat 48 years ago who donated Rs 2 each to fund the film, was last month showcased at the 77th Cannes Film Festival under its Classics segment.

It starred Smita Patil, Girish Karnad, Naseeruddin Shah, Amrish Puri, Kulbhushan Kharbanda, and Abha Dhulia.

The Film Heritage Foundation (FHF), the not-for-profit organisation behind the movie's restoration, shared a series of photos from Saturday's event on its official Instagram page.

"It was a star-studded evening and a full house at the special premiere of the restored Manthan in Mumbai today that was attended by the cast and crew of the film and several luminaries from the film industry and patrons of the arts including Shyam Benegal, Govind Nihalani, Naseeruddin Shah, Kulbhushan Kharbanda, Abha Dhulia, Preeti Sagar, Prahlad Kakkar, Shama Zaidi and the families of Smita Patil, Girish Karnad, and Dr Verghese Kurien," the Mumbai-based FHF said in the post.

Fronted by Patil, "Manthan" is inspired by the groundbreaking milk cooperative movement by Dr Verghese Kurien that transformed India into one of the largest milk producers in the world and is credited for creating the billion-dollar brand Amul.

Its title song "Mero Gaam Katha Parey", sung by Sagar, was later used as the soundtrack for Amul's television commercial.

According to FHF, the event opened with a standing ovation for Benegal and the film's team. Shivendra Singh Dungarpur, FHF director, moderated a session with the cast and crew where they spoke about the making of "Manthan".

The restored film hit the screens on Saturday across 51 cities and 101 theatres in India, including Mumbai, New Delhi, Anand, Rajkot, Chennai, Kochi, Hyderabad, Jaipur, and Chandigarh. Viewers can also watch the movie on Sunday.

"FHF would like to thank Gujarat Milk Marketing Federation Ltd. (Amul) for supporting the restoration and joining hands with FHF, PVR-Inox and Cinepolis to release the film across the country," the foundation further said in the post.

The restoration was carried out using the 35mm original camera negative preserved at the NFDC-National Film Archive of India with sound digitised from the 35mm release print preserved at FHF.

For its Cannes screening, the National Award-winning "Manthan" was restored at Prasad Corporation Pvt. Ltd.'s Post–Studios, Chennai and L’Immagine Ritrovata Laboratory, in association with Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation Ltd, Nihalani and Benegal. PTI RDS RDS RDS