Revisit ‘Vasantha Maligai’ on Dec 7

CHENNAI: The trend of digitally restoring old movies is growing to cater to audiences with retro taste and to introduce the younger generation to some of cinema's classics that were hitherto buried in archives and brought out from time to time during film festivals.

A digitally restored version of 'Vasantha Maligai', a romantic hit featuring Tamil cinema icon Sivaji Ganesan, will be re-released across Tamil Nadu on December 7. P Srinivasan of Sai Ganesh Films who has just finished the restoration work at a cost of 10 lakh, says he is happy to bring the movie alive on digital restoration cinemascope. "We have been planning to restore Sivaji Ganesan's hit movies for a long time. The new generation is not aware of the talents of yesteryears. So we have restored the film mainly for the youngsters," said Srinivasan.

Directed by K S Prakash Rao, 'Vasantha Maligai', a remake of the Telugu film 'Prem Nagar", was released in 1972. With Sivaji Ganesanand Vanisree in lead roles, the movie ran continuously for 750 days in theatres. Apparently, producer D Ramanaidu also made the movie in Hindi titled 'Prem Nagar' which was released in 1974. While Akkineni Nageswara Rao and Vanisree played the lead roles in Telugu, Rajesh Khanna and Hema Malini did the same in Hindi.

It took more than five months to complete the project. "I worked hard on the negatives of the film. There were black marks and lines and some were difficult to restore. We spent time on each and every detail. And the result was positive," said Srinivasan.

Even though the restoration trend in Tamil cinema began earlier this year with 'Karnan', another Sivaji hit, the crew who finished the project under Srinivasan is optimistic about restoring more old movies. "The young generation is very keen on old movies. That doesn't mean they will sit and watch the old prints. We have to serve them old wine in new bottle. If you restore it digitally, they will like it. And that's the trend now," said D V Murali, a distributor of the digitally restored 'Vasantha Maligai'. The movie will be released all over Tamil Nadu. "There are some other films of Sivaji Ganesan in our list. We will do it in the coming months," he adds.

'Vasantha Maligai' had hit songs like 'Oru Kinnathai' (T M Soundararajan) and 'Kudimaganey' (T M Soundararajan, L R Eswari). "We have given a digital mix to the songs too. The new technique will add clarity to the music composed by veteran music director K V Mahadevan," said Srinivasan.