“Sholay” the Indian blockbuster celebrates its 50 years, whose journey began from an uncertain beginning to a monumental success, is a powerful reminder that once a spark ignites they can turn into an inferno that can’t be doused. This is the story of the team who smelled failure in the first week of releasing the film turned around by marketing in to the evergreen blockbuster. Sholay with stars like Amitabh Bachchan, Dharmendra, Hema Malini, Sanjeev Kumar, Jaya Baduri and Amjad Khan. Sholay inspired by Spaghetti Westerns and Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai, the film had a flavour of its own, with Indian emotion, dusty landscapes, gunslinger and melodrama. Gabbar Singh played by relatively unknown, Amjad Khan,  launched himself with a gravelly voice and chilling unpredictability. The dialogues from the film are etched into public memory.

On 15^th August 1975 in India “Sholay” costing £250, 000 mega blockbuster and a devotional movie Jai Santoshi Ma made at a budget cost of £25,000 was released, with Santoshi Ma, raking £530,000 leaving Sholay eating dust, flop and catastrophic disaster. Director Ramesh Sippy’s career hangs by a thread, Salim- Javed over ambitious, Amjad Khan’s Gabbar Singh the iconic villain played by Dannu Denzongpa. By week 2, the music of the movie along with its dialogues was played repeatedly in Akashwani, India’s national radio and started becoming popular. R.D. Burman’s magic starts to spread. Sippy had sold the soundtrack to Polydor for £ 5, 000. The director demanded stereophonic sound, as R.D. Burman summoned 60-piece orchestra Pandit Shivkumar Sharma on Suntoor , Bhupinder Singh on Guitar, Manohari Singh on saxophone and flute and Kerso Lord on synthesizer, intro guitar played by Bhanu Gupta. The story of the bond between Jai and Viru the films iconic duo with an even iconic song which took 21 days to finish shooting just the song, the whistle at the end played by R.D. Burman’s assistant manhori Singh. Gabbar Singh’s entry theme the rocky ravines of Ramgarh originally shot at a place called Ramanagara,  50 kms from Bengaluru in southern India, the metal clangs on the  rocks, jackals howling, heavy boots crunching the gravel.

Fifty years on Shehzad Sippy, Ramesh Sippy’s son, uncovered in a forgotten warehouse in Mumbai revealing boxes of film elements- including the original 35mm camera used during the shoot, and began a journey of restoration which took three years.

The restored version of Sholay complete with its uncut scenes and original climax – premiered at the II Cinema Ritrovato Festival in Bologna, under open sky, one of Europe’s biggest public screens.