The Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF) and the Film Heritage Foundation (FHF) will release Shyam Benegal’s restored ‘Manthan’ in 100 cinemas across 50 cities in the country.
The film will be released on June 1, World Milk Day. In Gujarat, it will be released in Ahmedabad, Surat, Vadodara, Anand, Rajkot, Gandhinagar and Nadiad.
The restored 134-minute 1976 film received a red-carpet world premiere at the Cannes Classics 2024 in France recently making it the only Indian film selected under the classic section this year.
Crowd-funded film
Manthan (The Churning) is credited for being the world’s first crowd-funded film that was produced by half a million dairy farmers of Gujarat who had contributed Rs 2 each towards the production of the film.
When the film was released, it was a huge success as the farmers themselves came to see the film, travelling in bullock carts from small towns and villages.
The film was a fictionalised narrative of the beginnings of the dairy cooperative movement that started in Anand, transforming India from a milk-deficient country to the world’s largest milk producer. The film’s story drew inspiration from the late Dr Verghese Kurien, the Father of India’s White Revolution.
The film was produced with a budget of Rs 10 lakh and has helped generate milk output value of Rs 10 lakh crore annually, said GCMMF’s managing director Jayen Mehta, adding that the movie has made a big contribution towards India becoming the largest producer of milk in the world.
“I was so pleased to hear about the fantastic response that the restoration of ‘Manthan’ received at its world premiere. But I am even more delighted that the restored film will be released in cinemas across the country,” said Benegal.
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