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What ‘Sholay' is not
Ramesh Sippy's Sholay turns 50 on August 15. The revenge drama, written by Salim-Javed, stars Amitabh Bachchan and Dharmendra as the ruffians Jai and Veeru. They are hired by retired police officer Baldev Singh (Sanjeev Kumar) to capture the vicious dacoit Gabaar Singh (Amjad Khan). Hema Malini plays the tonga driver Basanti who jabbers her way into Veeru's heart, while Jaya Bachchan plays Radha, who enchants Jai. Sholay is considered one of the greatest Indian films ever made. To mark its 50th anniversary, Sippy Films and Film Heritage Foundation carried out a new restoration that reinstates Ramesh Sippy's original ending. Premiered at the Il Cinema Ritrovato Festival in Bologna in June, the restored Sholay will be screened next at the Toronto International Film Festival in September. What did Sholay accomplish in its time, what did its success mean for its director, and what has been its impact? In an insightful and provocative essay, writer-director Atul Sabharwal (Powder, Berlin, Jubilee) analyses the film's mythos and legacy. 'Do you think you are writing Sholay?' Sholay is not a successful film. In the 2002 edition of Sight and Sound magazine's poll of the greatest film of all times Citizen Kane topped the chart. That was my first year in Mumbai. I did not have much idea about classic American cinema or European cinema or the Japanese. Indian films I could converse on, Hindi anything and quite a fistful of Tamil and Bengali films, all thanks to Doordarshan. Even in 2002, 27 years after its release, Sholay was still a part of the conversation – as an influence, as the guiding light that, when applied as a template, might steer the movie ships to the shores of success away from the docks of the flops. Every story sitting that I was a part of, whether the film went anywhere beyond that' stage or not, whether the film being developed was similar in genre or story to Sholay or not, Sholay would invariably come up. Sometimes it was, if these actors come on board, this could become Sholay. At other times, when my ambition on the page outran the producer's appetite for risk, I also got to hear, do you think you are writing Sholay? The context of what Sholay meant to the people who, back then, lived through the times when Sholay was being made and when it hit the cinemas, I got from a conversation I had with Rishi Kapoor while we were working together on my film Aurangzeb. One evening in Nainital, Chintuji, as he was lovingly called, but only if he would permit you (I had seen him give a scathing response to someone over a call who dared call his elder brother 'Dabboo'. 'He is Mister Randhir Kapoor!' Rishi Kapoor shot back), invited me over to his hotel room to share a meal and a Black Label. As the evening unfolded into the night, we talked about his films, his hits and misses, his Sargam and Bobby and Prem Rog and Amar Akbar Anthony. He was fondly recounting – that one was silver jubilee (six uninterrupted months at the cinema of release), and that other one was golden jubilee (one uninterrupted year). Special 'Bobby' buses ran from the rural areas of Karnataka to Bangalore so that people could watch Bobby – that one was platinum jubilee (two years). 'Which of your films went beyond platinum jubilee?' I asked. 'What's beyond platinum jubilee?' He growled at the lameness of my question. But, as memory from decades ago rose over the wisps of whisky, he melancholically added, 'Only Sholay went beyond platinum jubilee. It ran for five years uninterrupted at Minerva. I was not in it.' An uninterrupted run of five years is like a platinum jubilee raised to the power of two and then an added golden jubilee. It was so unprecedented that the film industry did not have a jubilee term for Sholay 's box office run. Citizen Kane, which topped the Sight and Sound List, was voted as the number one film from 1962 to 2002. That's quite a feat for a feature film that was dead on arrival and buried before its release. Citizen Kane doomed the twenty-something Osron Welles's career. Welles would never touch the pinnacle of Citizen Kane again ever in his career. Citizen Kane was not as fortunate as Sholay. And yet, it is Citizen Kane that has influenced filmmakers across generations and nations, many of whom have spoken about how Welles's craft broke every rule in the Hollywood's syntax of filmmaking and gave filmmakers a film that set them free from the tyranny of formulae. In making Sholay, its director, the twenty-something Ramesh Sippy, also broke free from the tyranny of locally imposed syntax and infused the film with craft across all departments. If mainstream Hindi films in general were extravagant, loud and full of flourishes, Sholay was an exercise in restrain and minimalism – be it the background score, understated performances, editing, or cinematography. Film critic and author Anupama Chopra in her book Sholay: The Making of a Classic calls the narrative 'an unhurried tale'. In one of the office lobby conversations I had with my then producer Ram Gopal Varma, he said about Sholay that it has 'such a strong directorial presence'. What is craft to a movie, anyway? It's a completely unnecessary element as far a viewer's enjoyment of a film is concerned. The analogy I always relate to and can draw a parallel to when it comes to explaining craft in movies is from Daniel W Hillis's The Pattern on the Stone. In this book, Hillis illustrates how computers work and writes, 'Learning a programming language is not [difficult], since the syntax is relatively simple and vocabularies are rarely more than a few hundred words. But, there is a big difference between being able to understand the language and being able to write it well. Every computer language has its Shakespeares, and it is a joy to read their code. A well written computer program possesses style, finesse, even humor - and a clarity that rivals the best prose.' The negative inference of Hillis's statement is that you may not be the Shakespeare of coding and yet your computer programme may function well for a user. Hillis devoted his life to studying these nuances. He is a contemporary of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, perhaps as talented in computer science if not more. In Po Bronson's book on the Silicon Valley of the 1990s The Nudist on the Late Shift, the chapter dedicated to Hillis is titled The Dropout. Craft is a choice that most choose not to accept because craft is tough. The nuance, the finesse, demand the patience of an artisan and craftsman. But that's not the Sholay that I heard about in conversation when I started working in the film industry. Sholay had been reduced to a 'blockbuster', a 'multi-starrer', a 'box office record setter', a 'money-spinner'. It seemed that the message Sholay had driven home to the practitioners of the industry was: cast stars, as many stars as possible, shoot scale (easier said than done, even if you have the budget). Even when the technicians behind the film were spoken about, it was mostly its writer duo Salim-Javed. 'The money that Salim-Javed charged after that film', 'the writers who could demand a fee as big as the film stars,' are the phrases repeated until date. MS Shinde, the editor of Sholay, lived and died in abject poverty. Ritesh Soni, the editor whose editing room shared the wall with the editing room of Aurangzeb at the Yash Raj Studios told me that Shinde, impressed by Ritesh's work in on Veer Zaara, had invited him over for tea to his house. Ritesh was heartbroken to see that the man lived in a one-room apartment of an old building in Parel. In that room, somewhere on the shelf was the Filmfare trophy that Shinde had won for Sholay. Shinde's financial condition later forced him to move to an even smaller dwelling in Dharavi, where he breathed his last. The way this industry treats its genuine scissorhands of image and sound will need another article. That Sholay did not make fortunes of all associated with it is not a running strand through its general folklore. I was myself twenty-something, studying for a completely different career in Agra when Anupama Chopra's book on Sholay came out. It was the first behind-the-scenes book that I had ever read which covered a film that I knew inside out as a viewer. By the time I came to the chapter which stated that although Ramesh Sippy was studying at the London School of Economics, '…his heart wasn't in it. He missed the smell and noise of studios', a dam burst somewhere inside me. I conveyed my decision to my mother, who then spoke to my father, to let me go to Mumbai to work at those smelly and noisy film studios. It took my father a year to make up him his mind, or make peace with my decision, but he eventually relented. For the first time, my father is going to learn about this and hold Chopra responsible for a lot of things. Back then, my father dropped me at the Agra Cantt station to board the train for Mumbai, a city I had never been to before. That day was Holi, coincidentally. As I poured over Chopra's book, I understood why, as far as the cinematic language of cuts, dissolves, foleys, rhythms and lensing is concerned, the prose of Sholay is Shakespearean. Not just in its broad strokes, like the movement of Gabbar's swords transitioning to the shawl flying off from Thakur's shoulders and revealing his amputated arms – even in its feather- touch nuances, Sholay is immensely rich in its craft. One such nuanced touch is the moment after the Holi song where Gabbar, having laid siege on Ramgarh, decides to make Jai and Veeru fall at his feet. Veeru doesn't move. Jai contemplates, steps forward. Gabbar glows in glee. Jai bends down, only to swiftly flick some colored powder into Gabbar's eyes. As Jai jumps aside, the shot cuts to Gabbar in a low angle shot, harsh noon sun glares up above him in the sky, hitting the lens directly and blinding the audiences' eyes, accompanied by an unpleasant riff of music by RD Burman. With that sun in the shot, the technicians behind Sholay gave its audience the same burning sensation in their eyes as Gabbar must have felt in the moment. That shot of Gabbar is not even a five seconds. It need not have been low angle shot, the unit could have settled for a close-up of Gabbar rubbing his eye. The unit need not have waited for the sun to reach the right position in the sky for the frame. But the fact that the unit did, is their commitment to the craft. That shot is from my memory of my first viewing of Sholay upon its re-release in Agra. It has lasted. The real failure of Sholay is somewhere else, though. To understand what is failure, one must try and understand what marks success. The definition is subjective. I narrow down success to two types – the one that liberates, and the one that enslaves. The success of Citizen Kane is the one that liberated a generation, gave them guts to take risks, break the rules, go against the studio system, leading to the emergence of the Hollywood of the 1960s and the 1970s. Sholay 's success is the success that enslaved. Sholay became its own set of formulae, not just for the film industry, but even for those who made Sholay. In Shaan, Ramesh Sippy's directorial follow up, you get everything that Sholay gave you – loveable crooks, a villain who would kill his own henchman in his introduction scene because he/they dared bring him bad news, hero(es) on a bicycle chasing upset heroine(s) riding a public transport, a multi-starrer. In Saagar, he even cast Kamal Haasan, perhaps to make it pan-Indian. The rest of the industry fared far worse. I have used the word syntax quite a few times in this article. It's in the Hillis quote too. But, most importantly, I've recently heard it on a few podcasts featuring people from the industry. As the films from Hyderabad and Chennai break box office records, producers, directors, exhibitors, both veteran and young, have chided the directors working in the Hindi film industry to have 'forgotten the syntax of a good Hindi film'. I wondered what is the 'syntax' of Manoj Kumar's Shor, a hit film from 1972, where the protagonist loses his wife to an accident and his son ends up mute due to damaged vocal chords. Driven by his desire to hear his son speak again, the father goes through hardships to raise money for his son's surgery and in the process faces an accident himself that ruptures his eardrums. When the son gets his voice back, the father loses his ability to hear. The film ends. Raj Kapoor's Prem Rog, a jubilee success, is one of the darkest mainstream Hindi films. Rishi Kapoor was in it, and he is terrific. Despite such examples, if you take a risk and fail miserably at the box office, the industry tells you that you have committed sacrilege. Fair. But if you take a risk and the film succeeds, you are told that you have merely dodged a bullet, that luck may not be so rewarding the next time. Sholay empowered a few to enslave a whole bunch. Since Sholay, the industry has elusively hoped to be rewarded with similar successes without investing time, effort and money towards the craft, towards risk-taking, towards upending the formula. There have been many box-office successes since Sholay. But there are hardly any among those films where a cut, a sound, a dissolve, would become unforgettable in viewers' minds. While it was under-production and up until a few weeks after its release, it was rumoured that Sholay would fail. When it succeeded like no other, the same industry, it seems, took its revenge on Sholay. It reduced Sholay to a template for fortifications – de-risk through stars, de-risk through tropes, de-risk through canvas. It was forgotten that while it was under-production, Sholay itself was not that fortified. It was vulnerable to failure. And it was forgotten that while fortifications may get success in numbers, the true power that lies with filmmakers is vulnerability. How the industry interprets box office success is something I learnt through Ram Gopal Varma, 'Ramuji' for us then and now. Gadar and Lagaan were released on the same day. Ramuji and I were at his office that weekend. Trade analysts were lauding Gadar 's success but were dismissive of Lagaan 's run. I had loved Lagaan and being new in the industry I was upset that the trade's Chinese whisperers were deriding such a well-made film. I shared my feelings with Ramuji. He replied, 'The industry will never acknowledge something like Lagaan and they will always be cheerleaders of Gadar because to make a film like Lagaan they will have to work hard on detailing. Gadar they think they can make again.' How bloody prophetic Ramuji, in a Shakespearean sense. Atul Sabharwal is the writer-director of the television series Powder, the films Aurangzeb, Class of '83 and Berlin, as well as the writer of the web series Jubilee.
Time of India
28-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Time of India
Italy honours Film Heritage Foundation Director Shivendra Singh Dungarpur with the prestigious Vittorio Boarini award
This prestigious award recognizes Dungarpur's extraordinary dedication to the cause of film preservation and restoration, and his pivotal role in building a movement to save film heritage across India and the subcontinent. Almost 10-15 years ago, when film restoration experts in India first began sounding the alarm that 75% of early Indian cinema had vanished due to neglect, decay, and indifference, the revelation was both staggering and sobering. The loss seemed irreversible. But this month, at Il Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna, Italy, one of the most tireless champions of India's cinematic legacy received a powerful global endorsement. National Award-winning filmmaker, archivist and Director of Film Heritage Foundation, Shivendra Singh Dungarpur , was conferred with the esteemed Vittorio Boarini Award at a special ceremony recently, during the Il Cinema Ritrovato Festival in Bologna, Italy by Gian Luca Farinelli, Director of the Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna. This prestigious award recognizes Dungarpur's extraordinary dedication to the cause of film preservation and restoration, and his pivotal role in building a movement to save film heritage across India and the subcontinent. Andrea Anastasio, director of the Italian Institute of Delhi says," The award is a very prestigious acknowledgement of Shivendra and Teesha's work. When Shivendra stated that 75% of early Indian cinema is lost due to neglect and absence of conservation, it was clear that unless someone started the process, future Indian generations would not have been able to know their heritage.' by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Dementia and Memory Loss Has Been Linked To This Common Thing. Memory Health Learn More Undo Italy has honoured Shivendra Singh Dungarpur and Teesha Cherian of the Film Heritage Foundation. Italy, through Bologna's Cineteca di Bologna and the festival Il Cinema Ritrovato, has emerged as a key international partner in India's cinematic salvage mission. Many of the restored Indian classics that have travelled to global film festivals - Ishanou, Aranyer Din Ratri etc have been brought back to life with Italy's technical support and curatorial platform. Shivendra Singh Dungarpur states, "I am deeply honoured to be the recipient of the Vittorio Boarini Award which is a recognition of my work in film preservation under the aegis of Film Heritage Foundation that I founded in 2014. It has been a very challenging undertaking to work towards saving endangered film heritage in our part of the world with limited resources and support over a decade. But I am proud to say that we have built a movement for film preservation not just in India, but in neighbouring countries like Sri Lanka and Nepal and achieved many milestones in an incredibly short span of time from training film archivists to doing world-class restorations of Indian films to bringing classic cinema back to the big screen and preserving every bit of film heritage we can find. It is wonderful to have this work appreciated and acknowledged and it only reaffirms our commitment to the cause as there is so much more to do.' Shivendra Singh Dungarpur Andrea Anastasio, director of Italian Institute of New Delhi says, "This is enough to understand the value and the relevance of the work the Film Heritage Institute does. After the award ceremony, we could see the restored copy of Aranyer Din Ratri, by Satyajit Ray at the Arlecchino Theatre, a great hall with a fantastic screen . It was a house full screening and it was really amazing to see the crowd of young viewers attending the screening. That's what Bologna is also relevant a year, for ten days the city is flooded with film buffs from all over the world in occasion of 'Il Cinema Ritrovato' (literally The Re-Found Cinema). It's a festival spread all over Bologna, where restored old films from all over the world are screened in the new splendour of 4K in the city's theatre, while every night a giant screening outdoor happens at Piazza Maggiore, exactly where the restored copy of Sholay was screened last 27th June." Dungarpur credits the Cineteca di Bologna as the inspiration behind the establishment of the Film Heritage Foundation, noting its integral role in the foundation's journey over the past fifteen years. Further elaborating on his personal connection to the Cineteca di Bologna and the Il Cinema Ritrovato Festival he adds, "I first attended the Il Cinema Ritrovato Festival conducted by Cineteca di Bologna in 2010 and it changed my life. I saw the best of world cinema beautifully restored, and entered a whole new world where people were dedicated to saving films for posterity and bringing them back to life again. I went as a filmmaker and cinephile and emerged wearing another hat of a film archivist and have been going back to Bologna every year since then. " The presentation of the Vittorio Boarini Award to Shivendra Singh Dungarpur highlights his significant impact on safeguarding cinematic history and underscores the global importance of film preservation efforts. The Vittorio Boarini Award, instituted in 2022 by the Cinetecadi Bologna as part of its annual Il Cinema Ritrovato festival, is an international recognition honoring individuals or institutions who have made exceptional contributions to the preservation, restoration, promotion or dissemination of cinema as cultural heritage. It is named in tribute to Vittorio Boarini (1938–2021), the visionary founder and first director of the Cineteca di Bologna, whose efforts were instrumental in transforming it into one of the world's foremost film archives. The award celebrates a lifelong commitment to cinema preservation, international advocacy for film heritage, leadership in archive building and programming and work that bridges archival and public access to classic and rare films.
News18
17-07-2025
- Entertainment
- News18
50 Years Of Sholay: Restored And Timeless
The restored Sholay will keep film scholars busy for a while; but I hope it claims a small place in the consciousness of an audience born many years after it set screens on fire On Friday, 27 June, the fully restored uncut version of Ramesh Sippy's Sholay had its world premiere at Il Cinema Ritrovato Festival in Bologna, Italy. 'It was a magnificent evening in Bologna yesterday to watch the restored Sholay play out for the first time on a giant screen in the Piazza Maggiore in front of an audience that filled the seats, the steps around the square and even the floor as they watched one of India's most iconic films come back to life 50 years after it was released," Mumbai-based Film Heritage Foundation, which has painstakingly restored the classic, posted on Facebook. This version includes the film's original ending—changed due to objection from the censors—and deleted scenes. This work by the foundation could be the most important such project in India till date, given the near-mythical status that Sholay enjoys in our cinema. Sholay, billed as 'the greatest story ever told", was released on 15 August 1975. It went on to earn a still-standing record of 60 golden jubilees (50-week runs) across India, and was the first film to celebrate a silver jubilee at over 100 theatres. It was screened continuously at Bombay's 1,500-seat Minerva theatre for over five years. As a pre-teen schoolboy in Bombay, I watched it on Sunday, 18 August. Some 25 years later—I had watched Sholay many times more by then—quite by chance, the uncut version came to me, the one that Ramesh Sippy had originally submitted to the Censor Board. A colleague had bought a bootlegged CD of the film in Kuala Lumpur and watched it over the weekend. On Monday, a very puzzled man walked into my cabin. 'Sir," he asked, 'did Thakur Baldev Singh kill Gabbar Singh?" 'No," I said. 'He's about to, when the police arrive and stop him." 'But here he does!" my colleague said, producing his CD. I immediately knew that he had inadvertently bought a rare gem. It was fairly well-known among fans that Sippy and screenwriters Salim-Javed had originally killed off Gabbar, but the censors had insisted on getting the climax reworked. I borrowed the CD and watched it that night. The uncensored version is of course longer than the current one available to the public, but two scenes stand out. Young Ahmed, played by Sachin Pilgaonkar, is captured by Gabbar's men and brought to his den, where he is resting. Chunks of meat on a skewer are being roasted on a fire behind him. The bandits tell Gabbar: 'This boy is from Ramgarh. He was going to the station and we found him on the way." Gabbar thinks for a few seconds, watching a fly crawling down his forearm, then smiles and slaps it dead. The next sequence is Ahmed's horse, carrying his corpse, walking into Ramgarh. This is what see in the current censor-certified version. In the uncensored film, after he kills the fly, Gabbar shouts: 'Have you heard, all of you? The people of Ramgarh have started running away from the village now!" Ahmed asks Gabbar to let him go. The bandit replies: 'Tum jaante ho main kaun hoon? Hum Ramgarh ke baap hain, baap ('Do you know who I am? I am Ramgarh's father)." He then asks Ahmed to rub his nose on the ground at his feet. When Ahmed does not move, an enraged Gabbar yells at him to come forward. The young man tries to attack him and the bandit brings him down with one blow. His men are about to shoot Ahmed, but Gabbar stops them. 'You think a man feels any pain when a bullet kills him?" he says. 'Isko toh main tadpa tadpa ke maarunga, bahut tadpa tadpa ke maarunga (I'm going to give him a painful death, a very painful death)." He picks up a sharp iron rod from the fire, yanks Ahmed's head up by his hair and holds the rod next to his eye. We then see Ahmed's horse carrying his master's corpse home. In the current Sholay, in the climactic fight sequence between Thakur and Gabbar, a bloodied and exhausted Gabbar is lying on the ground and Thakur is about to kill him by stamping his face with his hob-nailed sandals when the police arrive and dissuade him. In the uncut version, the bloodied and exhausted Gabbar is still staggering around. Thakur is about to strike him again when he notices that right behind Gabbar is a sharp iron rod protruding from one of the two stone pillars which the bandit had used to string him up to hack off his arms. Thakur leaps, hammering Gabbar on his chest. Gabbar falls on the rod, gets skewered and dies. Veeru then drapes Thakur's shawl round his shoulders and holds him tight. Thakur rests his head on Veeru's shoulder and weeps uncontrollably. Over the years, Ramesh Sippy has said in several interviews that he did not agree with the cuts that the censors demanded, but had to comply because this was during the Emergency—a time of tough censorship. Even after the censored Sholay was released, there was a furore in the media about its 'extreme violence and cruelty"—that the film should have been certified Adults Only. By today's standards, the violence in Sholay is rather mild. And there is remarkably little blood that we see on the screen—only a few bullet wounds. Yet, in my opinion, Sholay is one of the few Indian films that the censors actually improved a bit, though absolutely accidentally. Film Heritage Foundation has recovered a priceless historic artefact of Indian cinema, but is the uncut version better than the one we are familiar with? My answer is no. The cruelty in Sholay lies in the acts that Gabbar commits, but the gory violence directly associated with them is off-screen. We do not see Thakur's arms being chopped off or his grandchild being shot by Gabbar. When Gabbar swats a fly dead, we know that the innocent Ahmed will be killed and the effect is far more chilling than a graphic description of how he is killed. The latter—with its iron skewer—is merely stomach-churning. The censors gave the scene a haunting—and aesthetic—subtlety by leaving the details of Ahmed's horrific end to the viewer's imagination. But the original ending with Gabbar dying exactly where he had chopped off Thakur's arms is much more emotionally satisfying than the current one. It is poetic justice, neatly closing the loop between the atrocities that Thakur suffered and the punishment that Gabbar deserved. I will certainly enjoy a Sholay with this sequence replacing the current one. But the dacoits chasing Basanti's horse-carriage for a full five minutes, which is a very long time in a movie? I can live without that. Or more of Soorma Bhopali and the jailor? We do not need that. Sippy himself pared Sholay down a few times. The film I watched in its 100-th week re-release was shorter, with a few sequences dropped or shortened from the 15 August 1975 one. The current DVD and streaming platform versions are even shorter. In 2007, I had the dire misfortune of watching Ram Gopal Varma Ki Aag, Varma's unauthorised remake of Sholay. The next day I wrote a column in the newspaper I was working for then that it was an act of barbarism—Varma had no clue what made Sholay… Sholay. Salim Khan, co-writer of Sholay, read the piece and took the trouble of finding my phone number, and called me. The conversation lasted more than an hour. I asked him about the various Hollywood films that he and Javed Akhtar had 'lifted" ideas and entire sequences from—after all, the basic Sholay storyline itself is redux The Magnificent Seven, a remake of Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai. Some of these sources are well-documented—Once Upon A Time In The West (the train robbery sequence and Gabbar killing Thakur's grandchild), The Professionals (the final chase as Veeru and Jai are escaping Gabbar's den with Basanti), Garden of Evil (the card draws inspired Jai's coin-flipping tricks that underpin the entire narrative)—and so on. I told him that I thought that every copied sequence was done far better in Sholay than the originals. Then I asked him the question that he must have faced a thousand times. 'Who was the real writer in Salim-Javed?" I asked. 'That's a wrong question," he replied. 'The man who sits outside a post office, a pen stuck behind his ear, waiting to fill up money order forms for poor illiterate people—he too writes (Woh bhi toh likhta hai). The correct question is 'Sochta kaun hai (Who is the thinker)?" I did not press that point. He revealed that Sippy was upset that some upstart had remade his epic, but he had told Sippy that Varma's misbegotten attempt would only add to Sholay's glory and make its status in the Indian film pantheon even firmer. Varma's film, I assume, would have been withdrawn by the theatres within a week. top videos View all I intend to watch the uncut Sholay when it is released in theatres in India. Of course Gen Z-ers may find it boring—it is almost three and a half hours long—and even insipid—computing power has made action sequences incredibly more awesome. Some may find it misogynistic. But like all great films, Sholay's fundamental themes remain universal and timeless—justice, loyalty and sacrifice. The restored Sholay will of course keep film scholars busy for a while; but I hope that it also claims a small place in the consciousness of an audience born many years after the film set screens all across India on fire. The reviewer is former managing editor of Outlook, former editor of The Financial Express, and founding editor of Outlook Money, Open, and Swarajya magazines. He has authored several books. He tweets @sandipanthedeb. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent the stand of this publication. tags : Sholay view comments Location : New Delhi, India, India First Published: July 01, 2025, 14:00 IST News opinion Opinion | 50 Years Of Sholay: Restored And Timeless Disclaimer: Comments reflect users' views, not News18's. Please keep discussions respectful and constructive. Abusive, defamatory, or illegal comments will be removed. News18 may disable any comment at its discretion. By posting, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
Time of India
28-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Time of India
Sholay's grand restoration premieres at Bologna's Il Cinema Ritrovato Festival
In a momentous occasion for , Ramesh Sippy's iconic film Sholay received a grand screening at the prestigious Il Cinema Ritrovato Festival in Bologna, Italy, on June 27, 2025. This special event marked the world premiere of the film's fully restored, uncut version, complete with its original ending and previously deleted scenes, commemorating its 50th anniversary. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now The screening took place in the magnificent open-air setting of Piazza Maggiore, providing a truly cinematic experience for thousands of cinephiles. The painstaking three-year restoration effort was a collaborative project between the Film Heritage Foundation and Sippy Films, ensuring that this cinematic masterpiece will captivate new generations with its authentic vision.
Time of India
28-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Time of India
Shivendra Singh Dungarpur receives prestigious Vittorio Boarini award for film preservation
Filmmaker, archivist and director of the Film Heritage Foundation, Shivendra Singh Dungarpur , was conferred with the esteemed Vittorio Boarini Award at a special ceremony on June 27, 2025, during the Il Cinema Ritrovato Festival in Bologna, Italy. This prestigious award recognises Dungarpur's extraordinary dedication to the cause of film preservation and restoration, and his pivotal role in building a movement to save film heritage across India and the subcontinent. The Vittorio Boarini Award, instituted in 2022 by the Cineteca di Bologna as part of its annual Il Cinema Ritrovato festival, is an international recognition honouring individuals or institutions who have made exceptional contributions to the preservation, restoration, promotion or dissemination of cinema as cultural heritage. It is named in tribute to Vittorio Boarini (1938–2021), the visionary founder and first director of the Cineteca di Bologna, whose efforts were instrumental in transforming it into one of the world's foremost film archives. The award celebrates a lifelong commitment to cinema preservation, international advocacy for film heritage, leadership in archive building and programming and work that bridges archival and public access to classic and rare films. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Dhoni's Exclusive Home Interior Choice? HomeLane Get Quote Undo Talking about the award, Shivendra Singh Dungarpur said, "I am deeply honoured to be the recipient of the Vittorio Boarini Award, named after an extraordinary man who founded the Cineteca di Bologna, an institution and its people that has had a profound impact on me." He credits the Cineteca di Bologna as the inspiration behind the establishment of the Film Heritage Foundation, noting its integral role in the foundation's journey over the past fifteen years. Further elaborating on his personal connection to the Cineteca di Bologna and the Il Cinema Ritrovato Festival he added, "I first attended the Il Cinema Ritrovato Festival conducted by Cineteca di Bologna in 2010 and it changed my life. I saw the best of world cinema beautifully restored, and entered a whole new world where people were dedicated to saving films for posterity and bringing them back to life again. I went as a filmmaker and cinephile and emerged wearing another hat of a film archivist and have been going back to Bologna every year since then. "
