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by Swapnil Azad

I walked into Calcutta’s Priya Cinema last Friday to watch “Pratidwandi” [The Adversary], Satyajit Ray’s film from 1970, expecting a roomful Ray-admirers who rushed to see Anik Dutta’s (deplorable) “Aparajito” earlier this year. And well, I was disappointed. There were just a handful of folks inside the auditorium, and I can’t tell how many of them watched the film seriously. Speaks volumes about the gradual cultural death of Calcutta which has been happening over the past decade. A few years ago, news of a Ray rerelease would’ve brought in masses who would liven up the theatre premises and its proximity, even if with flattery. Or maybe not, I’m too young to know.

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Keeping aside my lamentations on the cultural fall of Calcutta, the experience was certainly worthwhile. The print screened was...

The late Govindan Aravindan’s 1978 masterpiece “Thamp̄” (“The Circus Tent”) is one of two Indian films at this year’s Cannes Classics selection, alongside Satyajit Ray’s “Pratidwandi” (“The Adversary”) from 1970.

“Thamp̄” was painstakingly restored by India’s Film Heritage Foundation (Fhf), an organization founded by filmmaker Shivendra Singh Dungarpur in 2014. Dungarpur facilitated the restoration of Uday Shankar’s landmark film “Kalpana” (1948) by Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Foundation, the restored version of which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2012. He also collaborated with the World Cinema Foundation again for the restoration of the 1972 Sinhalese film “Nidhanaya” directed by eminent Sri Lankan filmmaker Lester James Peries. The restoration premiered at Venice in 2013.

The restoration of “Thamp̄” was a process that took eight months to achieve. Fhf, as a member of the International Federation of Film Archives, also put out a call to all the 171 member institutions around the world...

Principal photography has wrapped on “The Storyteller,” directed by Ananth Narayan Mahadevan (Busan title “Bittersweet”).

The film is based on Indian Oscar winner Satyajit Ray’s short story “Golpo Boliye Tarini Khuro.” In the story about originality versus plagiarism, Ray was raising the question: “What is more important – the story or the storyteller?”

A restored version of Ray’s “The Adversary” is playing at the Cannes Classics strand of the Cannes Film Festival.

The cast includes Paresh Rawal (Amazon Prime Video film “Sharmaji Namkeen”), Adil Hussein (“Star Trek: Discovery”), Revathi (Netflix anthology “Navarasa”) and Tannishtha Chatterjee (Busan title “Roam Rome Mein”).

The film is produced by billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Jio Studios (Netflix film “Dasvi”) in association with Purpose Entertainment (“Hotel Mumbai”) and Quest Films (Busan Kim Ji-seok Award winner “The Rapist”).

Mahadevan said: “As part of the celebrations around the life and work of the legend Satyajit Ray, we...

At the start of Good Omens, an angel and a demon are best friends forever… but forever might end before the week is up.

And so begins Amazon’s madcap adaptation of Neil Gaiman (American Gods) and Terry Pratchett’s 1990 novel, Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch. The project was in the works in 2015, when Pratchett passed away; his passion for the material drove Gaiman to complete it as writer, executive producer and showrunner.

In a minute, we’ll want to hear your thoughts about “In the Beginning.” But first, a recap:

God (hi, Olive Kitteridge‘s Frances McDormand!