Sixty years since the release of Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali, a lovingly restored set of the films of The Apu Trilogy are being released by Janus Films for a limited time, starting today, May 8th, at the Film Forum here in New York City.

The NYC debut of the digitally restored trio will be followed by releases in several other major cities (including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Washington DC, Philadelphia, Boston, Detroit, Houston and Vancouver) during May and June.

The trilogy, comprising Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road), Aparajito (The Unvanquished), and Apur Sansar (The World of Apu), are considered masterpieces the world over. They are based on two books by Bibhutibhusan Banerjee,

Watch this short video to catch a glimpse of the painstaking restoration of the films, which took seven years to complete, two decades after the original negatives were burned in a fire:

Apu Trilogy Restoration Trailer from Criterion Collection on Vimeo.

You can find more information about showtimes at the Film Forum here.

And go here if you want to listen to an interesting discussion about Satyajit Ray and his work on today’s Leonard Lopate show on WNYC radio.  Lopate’s guests were Ray’s son, Sandip, and Criterion Collection president, Peter Becker.