The 1979 film ‘Kummatty’ (The Bogeyman) was written and directed by Malayalam filmmaker G Aravindan. He was popularly known as a pioneer of arthouse cinema who worked on over 20 films between 1974 and 1991, as writer, director and composer. FHF founder Dungarpur had discovered Aravindan’s films while he was studying at the Film and Television Institute of India in Pune. When he started working on film restorations in the 2010s, he realised wanted to help save the late director's films, which had largely gone out of circulation. Photo: Film Heritage Foundation  

The process of restoring the 1979 Malayalam film gained momentum after a meeting with Bina Paul, the artistic director of International Film Festival of Kerala, over three years ago. She introduced him to G Aravindan’s son Ramu, who then went on to introduce him to K. Ravindranathan Nair, founder of General Pictures, which had produced five of Aravindan’s films. After a meeting with the producer in February 2020, he received permission to restore two films of the Malayalam filmmaker - ‘Kummatty’ (1979) and ‘Thampu’ (1978). Photo: Film Heritage Foundation 

The Mumbai-based archive reached out to the members of the International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF) to look for the original film camera negatives but did not find any. The Library of Congress in the USA and the Fukuoka Archive in Japan did have prints but they were not in good condition and had subtitles embedded in the film. Luckily, the National Film Archive of India (NFAI) had two surviving 35 mm prints, which finally helped in the restoration process. Photo: Film Heritage Foundation  

There were many different challenges while restoring the film and one of them was restoring the colour, which had completely decayed over time. All the colour depicting the skies, grasslands and foliage had turned magenta, proving to be a challenge for those working on the colour grading. While G Aravindan passed away in 1991, it was the film's cinematographer Shaji N Karun and the filmmaker's son Ramu Aravindan who helped revive and honour the original aesthetics of the film. In this photo, Malayalam filmmaker G Aravindan and cinematographer Shaji N Karun are pictured on the set of ‘Kummatty’ (1979).  Photo: Film Heritage Foundation 

Dungarpur believes G Aravindan didn't get the recognition he deserved in India because he passed away at a very early age. The filmmaker experimented with different cinematic forms in every film, which is why he never had consistency and that is what made his filmmaking unusual. Interestingly, Aravindan had managed to appeal to many people around the world including Japanese film critic Tadao Sato, who had said 'Kummatty' was the most beautiful movie he had ever seen. It was after this that many archivists in Japan collected prints of his films. Photo: Film Heritage Foundation

'Kummatty' is only the first of G Aravindan's films that have been restored. It premiered at the Il Cinema Ritrovato festival in Italy in the last week of July. Dungarpur intends to also start work on restoring 'Thampu' (1978) soon. Restoring Aribam Syam Sharma’s ‘Ishanou’ (1990), Kumar Shahani’s ‘Maya Darpan’ (1972) and Shyam Benegal’s ‘Mandi’ (1983) are also on the cards for the Mumbai-based foundation. Photo: Film Heritage Foundation