A 4K restored version of filmmaker Dev Benegal’s 1994 feature “English, August” will premiere at the 83 Venice International Film Festival as part of the movie gala’s Classics lineup, the Film Heritage Foundation (FHF) announced on Friday.
The selection marks a hat-trick for FHF at the festival after its restorations of Girish Kasaravalli’s “Ghatashraddha” (1977) and Bimal Roy’s “Do Bigha Zamin” (1953) premiered at the previous two editions.
The restored film will be presented at the festival by Benegal, actor Rahul Bose, producer Anuradha Parikh, sound recordist Vikram Joglekar and FHF director Shivendra Singh Dungarpur, the organisation said in a social media post.
Based on Upamanyu Chatterjee’s 1988 novel of the same name, “English, August” follows a young civil servant from an urban, westernised background who struggles to adjust to life in a small town after his posting.
Also starring Tanvi Azmi, Mita Vashisht and Shivaji Satam, the film is regarded as one of the defining works of India’s independent cinema movement of the 1990s.
The restoration was carried out by Film Heritage Foundation at L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory in association with Benegal, cinematographer Anoop Jotwani and producer Anuradha Parikh.
Benegal had revealed in a 2011 blog post that the original 35 mm negative of “English, August” had been damaged due to poor storage at a film laboratory in Chennai.
However, in 2020, Benegal announced that a clean 35 mm print of the film had been discovered at the National Film Archive of India, paving the way for its restoration.
According to FHF, the restoration used the best surviving archival materials, including 35 mm release prints preserved by the NFDC-National Film Archive of India and Film Heritage Foundation. The soundtrack was restored using digital audio tapes preserved by Benegal.
Besides “English, August”, the line-up for Venice Classics section also includes restored versions of Roberto Rossellini’s “Journey to Italy”, Roman Polanski’s “Cul-de-Sac”, Ernst Lubitsch’s “To Be or Not to Be”, John Cassavetes’ “Minnie and Moskowitz”, Ann Hui’s “The Story of Woo Viet”, Luis Bunuel’s “Illusion Travels by Streetcar”, Roger Corman’s “The Wild Angels”, Andrzej Wajda’s “Ashes and Diamonds” and Ettore Scola’s “Ugly, Dirty and Bad”, among others.
The 83 Venice International Film Festival is scheduled to be held from August 26 to September 5.
