To commemorate fifty years
of Avatar Meher Baba's Universal Prayer
the Baba film classic O Parvardigar
was painstakingly restored
to fantastic clarity
and extended to nearly twice its length.
The stunning new film includes additional footage in an exciting widescreen format with 5.1 Dolby digital and PCM audio

The song's composer Pete Townshend
of legendary rock band The Who
wanted the new film, the very first
widescreen film ever of Meher Baba
to be premiered at Meher Baba Oceanic
on July 20th 2003
- to Meher Baba's oldest surviving disciple
and Avatar Meher Baba Trust chairman
Bhau Kalchuri, and a large audience.
It was the first Baba event at
Meher Baba Oceanic for 22 years

For summer 2009 it is re-released
with many special features:
two earlier versions of the film
accompanying articles, including Pete's own account of the creation of the song, production notes, photographs,
technical restoration information,
twenty minutes exclusive audio of
Pete Townshend talking and playing
at the Third Amartithi, 38 years ago;
all in a collectible DVD box set made
to Pete's original design for the "Avatar" CDs

The DVD box set is 65 minute All Region
highest quality double sided, PAL and NTSC.
It is commercially pressed like a regular
movie, rather than written on
less durable writeable DVDs.

a four page illustrated
technical contents booklet

32 page lavishly illustrated book
by award-winning designers Mike Mcinnerney (The Who's "Tommy" album)
and Dinah Lone, with exclusive articles
about the prayer, the song and the films
- by Pete Townshend and the other
film archivists at MBF
as well as the full lyrics
and chords for Pete's song

two postcards of Meher Baba's
The Master's Prayer

special DVD sleeve

double-sided NTSC and PAL DVD
with five menus and
a host of exciting special features

Special features include:

the original 1976 O Parvardigar film

fascinating videos of three stages
in the restoration of the old film
and the making of the new film

four exclusive audio tracks including
two previously unreleased live recordings of Pete Townshend introducing and performing "Bargain" and "Time Is Passing"
at Meher Baba's Samadhi
at the time of the Third Amartithi
or memorial to Meher Baba's passing
January 31, 1972.

several printable pages on 3 pdf files,

photo album, technical notes on film restoration, sheet music.

"BBC Edit"
Richard O'Casey's 1999 partial restoration.
One of the important restoration tasks of the Film Archive is to return footage of Baba to its original speed of 14 to 16 frames per second. Although this version was never intended for release, but to show Pete, Martin Cook and others in MBF the practical benefit of correcting Baba's film speed, it has become popular in its own right since the release of the DVD box set.
Contains all footage at correct speed and some picture restoration. Song plays 4% slower (half a tone lower in pitch) as approved by Pete for this film version. Some shots in the original version had to be cut out as the correct-speed footage runs to 12 mins but the song is only 7 mins. Re-edited one lunchtime at BBC television.

"Restored and Extended"
Richard O'Casey's 2003 complete restoration. Richard recalls, "We felt the time was right to make this radical restoration. For good technical and film archival reasons, but also as an exciting celebration of fifty years since Baba dictated the original prayer. ... I tried to respect the spirit and form of Ginny Katz's original as much as I could whilst making improvements in almost every area."
The footage from the original negatives is much clearer and the sound is also better and in stereo and 5.1 Dolby digital surround sound (in the DVD box set). Pete's song runs, for the first time, at the exact speed of the original recording at Baba's tomb in 1972.
A radical approach to accomodating 12 mins of film was taken (the correct-speed footage runs to 12 mins but the song is only 7 mins). This involved making the first widescreen Baba film with sometimes two or even three 'windows' of film on the screen at once. A technique pionered by Abel Gance, before the advent of 'talkies', in his 1923 40-hours-long epic "Napoleon", and now increasingly seen in modern cinema, tv and online program-making.
To enhance the film's dynamic pace, the new version includes unreleased 35mm footage of Baba at Portofino Italy in 1933 as well as rare 8mm film of Baba from our Archive. All this footage has also been restored by MBF.
Baba is positioned more centrally on the screen to avoid His head and hands being cropped: not by the original camera but by subsequent incorrect laboratory procedures or by the television itself. We correct this, sometimes using parts of the image never seen before. When viewed on computer screens the top edge of these restorations can be seen.
All shots of Meher Baba from the Original version have been retained and painstakingly restored, special attention being given to Baba's natural face color and movements.