How classics are finding new life

As audiences rediscover classics in gleaming 4K, Abhishek Prasad and Prasad Labs are quietly reshaping how India remembers its cinematic gold

- S KEERTHIVAS

THE lights dim in PVR: Select City Walk at Saket. A familiar Hindi song begins, but something feels different this time. The image is sharper, the colours richer, the sound fuller. In the theatre, people lean forward-not just watching, but comparing.

“It never looked this clear,” someone whispers. Another smiles, recognising a scene they last saw decades ago on a fuzzy television screen.

For many in the audience, this is not just a film screening of Pyaasa, the timeless Guru Dutt and Waheeda Rehman classic; it is a reunion with memory itself. Behind this transformation lies a largely invisible process, and one of its key figures is Abhishek Prasad, part of the third generation of the Prasad family, whose name has been intertwined with Indian cinema for over seven decades.

A legacy born in the lab

This story begins long before OTT platforms, 4K projectors or AI-assisted cleanup tools. The Prasad Group traces its roots to the 1950s, when Abhishek Prasad's great-grandfather, L.V. Prasad was actively involved in film production and direction. He directed and produced the films Chhoti Behan and Sasural of the '50s and '60s while among several other films in the Hindi, Telugu and Tamil industry. Muzaffar Ali's Umrao Jaan was also restored by the lab and screened in all PVRs in the city.

Back then, cinema was celluloid-physical, fragile, and unforgiving. When film labs at that time did not have adequate technology to process the negatives and prepare prints for distribution, the family stepped into the technical side of filmmaking. That decision led to the birth of Prasad Labs, which would go on to become one of south Asia's most prominent film post-production laboratories.