'On Monday evening, the auditorium of the Chavara Cultural Centre in Kochi held its breath. The lights dimmed, the projector whirred, and for a few seconds, there was only darkness. Then the frames flickered to life, sharp and vivid, freshly restored, almost reborn. Malayalam cinema’s first great milestone, Neelakuyil (The Blue Koel), unfolded once again before a packed audience, K Raghavan's timeless folk-inspired melodies like 'Ellaarum Chollanu', 'Kuyiline Thedi', 'Maanennum Vilikkilla' and 'Kayalarikathu' resonating throughout the hall.
It had been seventy-one years since Neelakuyil first played in theatres across Kerala, introducing a new language of storytelling. In 1954, it broke away from mythological retellings and melodramatic fantasies to plant Malayalam cinema firmly in the social soil of Kerala. Adapted from a story by Uroob and jointly directed by P Bhaskaran and Ramu Kariat, the film told a stark yet tender story of love across caste lines, embodied by Sathyan, Miss Kumari and Prema in roles that became immortal. That year, the film won the President’s Silver Medal for Best Feature Film, the first ever for a film from Kerala, and the All India Certificate of Merit at the same 2nd National Film Awards, also a first for South Indian cinema.
The screening in Kochi was no ordinary replay of history. This was the premiere of the film’s digitally restored 4K version, made possible by the National Film Development Corporation and the National Film Archive of India. The Cochin Film Society, once dormant after the pandemic, revived itself for this occasion, joining hands with the Chavara Cultural Centre to make the evening possible. As Fr Anil Philip CMI, priest, filmmaker, and Director of the Centre, welcomed the crowd, he reminded everyone that Neelakuyil was not just a film but a landmark that continues to breathe through the generations who gather to watch it.
He also drew the audience’s attention to two special guests whose presence gave the evening a rare poignancy: veteran cinematographer Vipin Mohan, who had acted in the film as Neeli’s orphaned child, and Prof Babu Thaliath, the son of its luminous heroine Thresiamma Kollamparampil, best known by her screen name Miss Kumari.
For both men, this evening was more than a screening. It was personal history entwined with cultural memory. “I always say the only crime I have committed is acting in Neelakuyil,” Vipin said with a laugh, addressing the audience before the show began. “I am the only one still alive from the cast and crew of Neelakuyil. I am alone here. After some time, I too will be gone and forgotten. But Neelakuyil will never be forgotten by the public. For me, this is something truly special.” His words carried a heavy resonance. A master cinematographer who would later shape Malayalam cinema’s golden decades, he was reliving his very first tryst with the medium. As the child of Sathyan's and Miss Kumari’s characters (Sreedharan Nair and Neeli), his presence on stage connected the present audience with a vanished era, reminding them that cinema, unlike lives, can defy mortality.
For Babu, the journey to this moment had stretched across decades, continents, and personal commitments. As the son of Miss Kumari, hailed as Malayalam cinema’s first true heroine, whose screen presence in films like Neelakuyil, Padatha Painkili, Randidangazhi and others defined an era, he had grown up with only traces of his mother’s life and legacy. She passed away in 1969 at the untimely age of 37, when he was barely three years old. Over the years, his academic career took him abroad, into philosophy and post-doctoral research, but cinema, and particularly his mother’s cinematic memory, continued to draw him back.
In his youth, while attending the Film Appreciation course at Pune’s Film Institute in 1989, he had first asked the legendary archivist PK Nair whether any of his mother’s films had been preserved. To his relief, PK Nair told him there were 22 titles in the archive. That knowledge stayed with him. Years later, a three-hour conversation with PK Nair about the urgent need for film preservation became, as he put it, “the biggest inspiration of my life.”
What followed was a slow, often frustrating process of trying to bring the films back to life. Restoration was expensive, running into lakhs per film. Private studios quoted astronomical sums, while even the official archives struggled to find funds. But Babu persevered, building contacts, raising awareness, and drawing strength from the memory of those conversations with Nair.
In 2019, on the 50th death anniversary of Miss Kumari, he decided firmly that the restoration had to move forward. A poor-quality Video CD screening of Neelakuyil at IFFK that year sealed his resolve. “Watching that print was painful,” Babu recalled. “The aspect ratio was wrong, the quality was poor. That was when I said, this cannot be the way we remember our history. It has to be done properly.”
Eventually, with the support of NFDC and the merging of the Pune archive with the Corporation, the restoration work began. When Babu was shown the first upgraded prints of films like Neelakuyil, Navalokam, Manthravadi, Atma Sakhi and CID, even on lower-quality Vimeo files, the effect was profound. “The sound especially was beautiful,” he said. “It felt like time itself had been resurrected.”
That sense of resurrection was evident in the Kochi screening. As the story of Sreedharan Nair (Sathyan) and the 'untouchable' girl Neeli (Miss Kumari) unfolded, the packed auditorium stayed hushed. The film ran close to three hours, yet no one left. For Babu, who admitted he had feared people might walk out, it was deeply affirming. After the show, visibly moved, he said, “The response went beyond our expectations. What struck me most was that everyone stayed till the end. That told me this film, seventy years later, still speaks to people.”
The emotions ran even higher for Vipin. After the applause died down, he struggled to hold back tears. “Neelakuyil is the biggest boon in my life. Even if I die, Neelakuyil will be there for sure. People will still come to see it. I can never forget this moment.” For the audience, too, the evening was more than an act of cinephile nostalgia. Many were elderly, drawn back to their youth, but there were younger faces as well, experiencing the film’s raw social realism for the first time. That realism, which broke ground in the 1950s, continues to echo.
Babu told us exclusively about the enduring freshness of black-and-white cinema, “The good thing about black and white restoration is that it looks fresh, almost as if it were made yesterday. Black and white films and photographs never lose their freshness. That’s not the case with colour. You can never truly bring back the same vibrancy in colour film.”
He further talked about the broader significance of the film beyond its visuals, saying, “Restoration is also social work. Neelakuyil reminds us of how life used to be in Kerala, the tea shops where people gathered, the irrigation systems, the simple houses, the sense of community. It reminds us of the prejudices, too, of caste and untouchability, and why it is important to move beyond them. Watching it today, I felt we were not just restoring a film but restoring memory, culture, and conscience.”
That sentiment was echoed by many in the audience. For them, Neelakuyil was not just a cultural artefact but a mirror to a Kerala that has transformed yet still bears traces of its past. For cinephiles, it was also a chance to appreciate how A Vincent’s cinematography opened Malayalam cinema's eyes to its own landscapes, and how K Raghavan’s folk music grounded it in its own soil.
For Babu, though, the work has only begun. He spoke of plans to push for a retrospective package at future film festivals, showcasing restored versions of films like Navalokam, CID, Avakashi, Mudiyanaya Puthran, Randidangazhi, Jailpulli, Kidappadam, Mariakutti, Aana Valarthiya Vaanambadi, Bhaktha Kuchela and Padatha Painkili, among others. Each of them holds a unique place in Malayalam cinema’s evolution, and together they could form a living archive of the black-and-white era.
As the audience departed from the auditorium that night, the conversations were animated but tinged with reverence. To watch Neelakuyil in its restored glory was not only to revisit a landmark film but to feel part of a continuum, where art resists decay and memory refuses to die. Babu captured the essence of the film’s message, saying, “As Bhaskaran master says in the film towards the end, it is more important to raise children as good human beings than to bracket them by caste, creed, or religion. Kerala was once a society burdened by prejudice, though thankfully, it has changed a great deal now.”
Cinema is often described as immortal. In a theatre filled with silence and song, with eyes fixed on a black-and-white dream reborn in 4K clarity, that immortality felt tangible. The blue koel had sung again, and Kerala had paused to listen.