TIFF Cinematheque, Toronto:
 BADNAM BASTI

BADNAM BASTItells the story of the “loneliness of a farmer and ex-criminal and his confrontation with a girl that he cannot possess despite his desire to do so”, as written in the publication The Other Cinema by Indian distributor Film Niryat from 1972. The majority of the films mentioned there were shown at Arsenal the same year and remained in the archive afterwards. Decades later, this 35mm print of BADNAM BASTI turned out to be the only one still in existence. 
Further central themes such as the slave trade and homosexuality were the reasons for the cuts ordered from the 132-minute original version by the Indian censors, which today is lost.  The only remained version remaining is the edited cut from the Arsenal film archive (83 min) and an incomplete, but longer image and sound negative from the NFDC – National Film Archive of India. Markus Ruff now presents the digital restoration with a sequence only preserved in the sound negative in Canada for the first time. (Stefanie Schulte Strathaus)