We hope to restore Ray's entire filmography: Tessa Idlewine

Film preservationist Tessa Idlewine, who has worked on restoring 21 of Satyajit Ray's classics including the Apu trilogy, says it is "heartbreaking" to see reels of iconic films in deplorable condition.
Tessa, who is a preservationist at the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences (AMPSS, said they aims to preserve all of Ray's 37 films.
"We have had a few years break from working on it. The last one we finished was in 2012, but we have not forgotten about Ray. It is our goal to finish them. We will never forget him," said Tessa.
The Academy began the Ray Preservation Project after he was awarded an Honorary Academy Award in 1992.

Unfortunately, in July 1993, a fire broke out at Hendersons Film Laboratories in South London in 1993, which damaged many of the Ray films that had just arrived from India and were on their way to being preserved in Los Angeles.
The Academy along with the Criterion Collection and L'Immagine Ritrovata in Bologna, Italy, spearheaded the restoration of Ray's Apu trilogy, comprising "Pather Panchali" (1955), "Aparajito" (1956) and "Apur Sansar" (1959).

"It took us three years from when Criterion got involved. If you think of it in terms of the very beginning, it took us over 20 years since the negatives were burnt and the Academy took over," Tessa told PTI.

"Preservation takes a long tome. It was thousands of hours of labour. It's a very time consuming process."
Tessa, who was speaking at an event on the sidelines of International Film Festival of India (IFFI), said some films were so badly damaged there was hardly any footage left.
"It was so heartbreaking. It still smells of fire. There is barely any footage left in the cans. Despite knowing that we have saved them, it is truly heartbreaking. To see them in such a terrible shape is sad.
Tessa said there could be many Indian films going through
the same state.

"There could be other films like that. They may not be burnt but deteriorating. In India alone there could be lots of such films, deteriorating, but there is not the time or money to save them all."
Filmmaker and film archivist Shivendra Dungarpur, who presented the event, recalled meeting Ray's favourite cameraman Subrata Mitra, who was sad about the future.
"I remember meeting his cameraman Subrata Mitra and in his last stages where he was teaching in a film school, he told me, 'What do you think people are going to think about my work? Such bad quality of DVDs and material is available, they will never think anything of me.

"'They will think this is easy because everyone is watching everything on the net.' This was coming from perhaps the world's most renowned cameraman. I wish he was alive to see his wonderful work," he said.
The Academy Film Archive's Satyajit Ray Preservation Project is an ongoing effort to preserve and restore Ray's entire filmography.