65th FESTIVAL DE CANNES (16 - 27 MAY 2012) OFFICIAL SELECTION – CANNES CLASSICS
Lewat Djam Malam (After the Curfew) (1954)
Kalpana (1948)
Contact Info: 110 W. 57th Street, 5th Floor New York, NY 10019, USA www.worldcinemafoundation.org - [email protected] LEWAT DJAM MALAM (After the Curfew)
Written by Usmar ISMAIL, Asrul SANI Director of Photography Max TERA Set Deisgner Abdul CHALID Original Music G.R.W. SINSU Sound B. SALTZMANN Editing SUMARDJONO Production PERSARI, PERFINI Starring A.N. ALCAFF(Iskandar), Netty HERAWATY (Norma), R.D. ISMAIL (Gunawan) Running Time 101’ Year of Production 1954 Country of Production INDONESIA Language INDONESIAN From NATIONAL MUSEUM OF SINGAPORE, WORLD CINEMA FOUNDATION, SINEMATEK INDONESIA
Restored in 2012 by the National Museum of Singapore and the World Cinema Foundation, with support from the Konfiden Foundation and Kineforum of the Jakarta Arts Council. The restoration work was conducted by Cineteca di Bologna/L'Immagine Ritrovata Laboratory from original film elements preserved at the Sinematek Indonesia.
Special thanks to the Usmar Ismail family.
ABOUT THE FILM
Lewat Djam Malam (After the Curfew) is a passionate work looking directly at a crucial moment of conflict in Indonesian history: the aftermath of the four-year Republican revolution which brought an end to Dutch rule. This is a visually and dramatically potent film about anger and disillusionment, about the dream of a new society cheapened and misshapen by government repression on the one hand and bourgeois complacency on the other.
The film’s director, Usmar Ismail, is generally considered to be the father of Indonesian cinema, and his entire body of work was directly engaged with ongoing evolution of Indonesian society. He began as a playwright and founder of Maya, a drama collective that began during the years of Japanese occupation. And it was during this period when Ismail developed an interest in filmmaking. He began making films for Andjar Asmara in the late 40s and then started Perfini (Perusahaan Film Nasional Indonesian) in 1950, which he considered his real beginning as a filmmaker. Lewat Djam Malam, a co-production between Perfini and Djamaluddin Malik’s company Persari, was perhaps Ismail’s greatest critical and commercial success.
2 NOTES ON THE RESTORATION
Lewat Djam Malam has been digitally restored using the original 35mm camera & sound negatives, interpositive, duplicate negative and positive prints preserved at the Sinematek Indonesia. The film prints were scanned at 4K resolution and restored at 3K resolution.
The digital restoration began by focusing on fixing instability and flicker followed by the meticulous work of dirt removal, carried out both by automatic tools and by a long manual process of digitally cleaning each image (frame by frame). Due to high humidity and temperature, the film suffered from signs of mould and vinegar syndrome – the laboratory took great pains to address these problems without damaging the definition of the photographic output, specifically with regards to details and faces. Nevertheless, several mould stains could not be digitally removed due to the movement of the shot during certain segments of the film. These are visible as vertical white stains which appear periodically throughout the film.
The original sound was digitally restored using the 35 mm original soundtrack negative. Two reels were missing from the soundtrack negative, and were therefore taken from the combined interpositive. The last 2 minutes of reel 5 were missing from these elements, but were recovered from a positive copy. The soundtrack has been scanned using laser technology at 2k definition. The core of the digital sound restoration consists on several phases of manual editing, high resolution de-clicker & de-crackle, and multiple layers of fully automated noise reduction.
The restoration was completed at Cineteca di Bologna/L’immagine Ritrovata laboratory in March 2012 with the collaboration of the National Museum of Singapore.
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3 KALPANA
Directed by Uday SHANKAR Written by Uday SHANKAR, Amritlal NAGAR Director of photography K. RAMNOTH Set Design K.R. SHARMA Music Traditional INDIAN MUSIC Editing N.K. GOPAL Production UDAY SHANKAR PRODUCTION Starring Uday SHANKAR (Udayan & Writer), Amala UDAY SHANKAR (Uma), Lakhmt KANTA (Kamini), Dr. G.V. SUBBARAO (Drawing Master), Brijo BEHARI BANERJI (Uma’s Father) Running time 155’ Year of Production 1948 Country of production INDIA Language HINDI From: WORLD CINEMA FOUNDATION, NATIONAL FILM ARCHIVE OF INDIA
Restored in 2012 by the World Cinema Foundation at Cineteca di Bologna/L’Immagine Ritrovata Laboratory from original film elements preserved at the National Film Archive of India.
Special thanks to Shivendra Singh and the family of Uday Shankar.
ABOUT THE FILM
A great work of hallucinatory, homemade expressionism and ecstatic beauty, Uday Shankar’s Kalpana (Imagination) is one of the enduring classics of Indian cinema. Shankar, the brother of the great Ravi Shankar, was one of the central figures in the history of Indian dance, fusing Indian classical forms with western techniques. In the late 30s, he established his own dance academy in the Himalayas, whose students included his brother Ravi and future filmmaker Guru Dutt (who worked as an assistant on Kalpana). After the closure of the academy in the early 40s, Shankar started preparations on his one and only film, many years in the making.
Kalpana, with an autobiographical narrative of a dancer who dreams of establishing his own academy (starring Uday Shankar and his wife, the great Amala Shankar – the film also marks the debut of Padmini, who was 17 years old at the time), is one of the few real “dance films” – in other words, a film that doesn’t just include dance sequences, but whose primary physical vocabulary is dance. A commercial failure when it was released, the film is now regarded, justifiably, as a creative peak in the history of independent Indian filmmaking.
4 NOTES ON THE RESTORATION
Kalpana has been digitally restored using a combined dupe negative and a positive print held at the National Film Archive of India.
The combined dupe negative was badly damaged and marked by lines, tears, dirt, dust, white marks and poor definition. The restoration required a considerable amount of both physical and digital repair in order to recover the beauty of faces, movements and costumes, and to reduce the aforementioned issues.
The original sound was digitally transferred from the combined dupe negative. Digital cleaning and background noise reduction was applied. The restoration has generated a duplicate negative, new optical soundtrack negative for preservation as well as a complete back-up of all the files produced by the digital restoration.
The restoration was completed at Cineteca di Bologna/L’immagine Ritrovata laboratory in March 2012.
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