Celluloid prints of ‘Nayak’, ‘Harano Sur’ to be screened for Uttam centenary
Times of India | 4 September 2026
Kolkata: It’s beendecades since viewers have had the chance to watch Uttam Kumar-starrers, Ajoy Kar’s ‘Harano Sur’ (1957) and Satyajit Ray’s 'Nayak’ (1966), projected from their original physical prints. As a groundbreaking initiative for the Mahanayak’s centenary, the state govt will bring the two masterworks back in 35mm at Radha Studio, with ‘Harano Sur’ screening on Saturday and ‘Nayak’ on Sunday.
At a time when global directors, including Christopher Nolan and Quentin Tarantino, are keeping celluloid alive despite the digital boom, this state initiative aligns local cultural stewardship with the worldwide revival of physical film. A digital DCP screening of ‘Nayak’ at Nandan on Friday will create a dual-format experience—offering a historic first-time chance to witness this Ray masterpiece across both digital and celluloid mediums in a single festival. “We checked the prints of ‘Nayak’ and ‘Harano Sur’ in our vault. They are in good condition. So, we proposed to screen them at Radha Studio,” said an I&C department official.
Rabindranath Dash, maintenance engineer-cum-chief manager (lab) at the state Film Archive (Radha Studio) and West Bengal Film Development Corporation Ltd, considers it a privilege to screen ‘Nayak’ and ‘Harano Sur’. “The original prints are in good condition and viewers will love to watch them on celluloid. No other film studio, apart from us, has a film projector in eastern India. We have 1,200 Bengali film titles, including feature films, newsreels, docu and short films, in our vault. That includes original camera picture negative and sound negatives,” Dash said.
Cinematographer Premendu Bikas Chaki told TOI that watching the same film on DCP and celluloid was a priceless experience. “Despite the minor blemishes, the authenticity and the warmth in a celluloid projection remains unmatched,” he said.
The other cult films to be screened in the digital format at the Uttam Kumar Film Festival include Tapan Sinha’s ‘Jhinder Bandi’ and ‘Jatugriha’ , Uttam Kumar’s ‘Kalankini Kankabati’ and ‘Banpalashir Padabali’ , Pijush Bose’s ‘Sanyasi Raja’ , Biswajit Chatterjee’s ‘Rakhtatilak’ , Arabindra Mukherjee’s ‘Agniswar’ and Sunil Bandyopadhyay’s ‘Antony Firingee’ and ‘Deya Neya’ , Haridas Bhattacharya’s ‘Shesh Anka’ and Yatrik’s ‘Ekhane Pinjar’ . While Biswajit will be in town to present his directorial venture, to be screened both at Nandan and Radha Studio, Mithun Chakraborty will present ‘Kalankini Kankabati’.