With Shyam Benegal’s Manthan (1976) making it to the headlines, thanks to the screening of its restored version at the Cannes Film Festival recently, the idea of lost and re-membered stands at the cross-section of visual retelling of the forgotten. The organisation responsible for its restoration is set to hit the headlines again with the screening of celebrated Odia film director Nirad Mohapatra’s classic Maya Miriga (Mirage, 1984) at the Il Cinema Ritrovato festival in Bologna, Italy, from June 22 to 30. “Even though thefilm was out of circulation for a long time, it kept popping up in conversations over the years.
As it happened, of the hundreds of films teetering on the verge of disappearing and clamouring to be restored, circumstances dictated that Maya Miriga make the list,” says Shivendra Singh Dungarpur, Director, Film Heritage Foundation. A still from the 1984 Odiya classic Maya Miriga : Film Heritage Foundation| Photo Credit:SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT The critically acclaimed film would have never seen the light of today, if the director’s son Sandeep Mohapatra had not made earnest efforts to restore it. The work that began in 2021, from one restoration lab to another, came to fruition after three years and is now going to be accessible to connoisseurs of cinema.
Nirad Mohapatra, alumnus of the Film and Television Institute of India, adhered to Italian Neo-Realism and Indian New Wave schools of filmmaking. It is evident in his cinematic choices in Maya Miriga wit.
