Where old movies go after ‘The End’

Film scholar and archivist PK Nair cut an imposing figure as he rushed down the corridors to catch a show at the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), Pune, in the early ’90s. Movie over, he would hop across the road to his office, the National Film Archive of India (NFAI), which he helped set up in 1964.

Shivendra Singh Dungarpur, who graduated from FTII in 1993, knew of Nair but had never interacted with him at length. The only time he spoke briefly with the veteran was when he asked him for a list of songs to be screened at the film institute’s Holi celebration — which was a bit of a tradition, marked by great revelry.

“We would prepare a list of songs and then go collect the reels from NFAI. That’s when I first realised his wealth of knowledge. ‘Nair saab , Mungda from Inkaar ’, and he would promptly reply — ‘reel no. 3’. He knew which scene, which song was in which can. The NFAI was his baby and his passion left us quite amazed, but then that was it. He soon retired and I forgot about him,” Dungarpur recalls, sitting in his south Mumbai office.

It was nearly two decades later that he really understood what Nair had set out to do. While that was reason enough for him to script the 2012 film Celluloid Man , about Nair, it also made him realise the need to preserve the heritage of Indian cinema.

“Nair saab insisted that he would not shoot if the film was about him. And I kept lying to him, ‘Yes, sir, it is about film preservation’. It was the only way he would agree to an interview,” Dungarpur says. “But when he told me about some of the lost films and the state of archiving in the country, I saw how passionate he was about it. It intrigued me into going beyond just the film,” he tells BL ink .

Through the Film Heritage Foundation (FHF), a non-profit organisation he set up in 2014, Dungarpur is safekeeping relics that narrate the vibrant stories of Indian film history, while also hoping to share the philosophy behind the effort.

The Scorsese effect

The decision to reconnect with Nair for the film came about purely by chance. Midway through a successful career as an ad film-maker, Dungarpur decided to go back to his first love — cinema. From 2009, he began travelling to meet some of his favourite directors such as Jiri Menzel, Andrzej Wajda, Istvan Szabo, Ken Loach and Manoel de Oliveira. On a flight, he stumbled upon a Martin Scorsese interview in a magazine where the legendary director advised every film-maker to visit a festival in Italy’s Bologna that screened restored films.

“As an aspiring film-maker, when you hear Scorsese say it, you hold on to every word. So we went to that festival and I still remember that it was an eye-opener. The films were given a new life... I immediately decided to locate Nair saab when I returned home,” Dungarpur says.

Alongside the shooting for Celluloid Man , he gained an education in film restoration and preservation. That learning deepened further when he facilitated the restoration of the 1948 film Kalpana , at Scorsese’s World Cinema Foundation.

“The film was based on dance and made by Uday Shankar, who was [sitar maestro] Pandit Ravi Shankar’s brother. Scorsese was enamoured of the film, so he decided to put his own money to restore it. But they were having trouble procuring it from the Indian government and I was asked to try and get it,” Dungarpur says.

The restored film was screened at Cannes in 2012, and Dungarpur was in awe at how beautifully it had been done. “ Celluloid Man was released around the same time. It really piqued my interest [in film restoration],” he says. This was also the time, he points out, when films such as Mughal-e-Azam were being coloured. “But this is the first thing that you don’t do.”

Restoration involves bringing the film back to its pristine condition, the way it was when it was released, and being true to the original creator’s vision, he explains.

Past perfect: An old film poster under restoration at the Film Heritage Foundation in Mumbai

“So if the film has grains, you don’t get rid of them. The restorer needs to understand what kind of elements existed back then — cleaning up the film or colouring it is completely against the idea of restoration.”

Often, the restoration and preservation of a film will prove more expensive than its creation. “But if you have a good understanding of the process and store celluloid film correctly, it can easily last you for 500 years.”

Flashbacks galore

Given the cost involved, Dungarpur decided to preserve whatever he could. At its two facilities in Mumbai, FHF has gradually pooled together celluloids from the years gone by. From discovering the original camera negative of Guru Dutt’s Bharosa at a kabadiwala (trash recycler) in Goregaon, to having the reel of the first Konkani film, Mogacho Aunddo , delivered in a derelict state in a newspaper cover, the foundation has had no dearth of projects over the years.

“We’ve already lost the first sound film of India, Alam Ara , which was made in 1931. Mogacho Aunddo was made in Portuguese-era Goa and released in 1950. Saving that film was the toughest job we’ve undertaken so far,” Dungarpur says.

Alongside films, FHF is also archiving and cataloguing memorabilia donated by the families of illustrious names from the industry — directors JBH Wadia, Kidar Sharma, AR Kardar, Sohrab Modi and Saeed Mirza, actors Pran and Ramola Devi, and also Nair, among others — in addition to material collected by Dungarpur that ranges from posters to lobby cards, letters, cameras, books, magazines and scripts.

From more recent times, there are films of actor Amitabh Bachchan, directors Vishal Bhardwaj, Farhan Akhtar, Shyam Benegal, Buddhadeb Dasgupta, Mani Ratnam, Govind Nihalani and Onir, and the filmmaker duo Sumitra Bhave and Sunil Sukthankar.

“We had to literally start building our collection from scratch — you can imagine how painstaking it is when you consider the fact that the NFAI was founded 50 years before us.” Preservation of film is again expensive, calling for a storage facility with controlled temperature and humidity.

The restored films are stored under temperature- and humidity-controlled conditions at a facility in Navi Mumbai. Mogacho Aunddo , Kalpana and Nidhanaya are some of the restored films available at the facility. Since it is a private archive, one would require permission from the foundation to access it.

Reel concerns: Mick Newnham of the National Film & Sound Archive of Australia explains the nittygritty of preserving celluloid at a workshop

Roping in the young

FHF also wants to get more people trained in the art of film restoration. In November last year, it held the fourth edition of its annual The Film Preservation and Restoration Workshop in Kolkata, where trainees learned from experts around the world.

Since 2015, entertainment company Viacom18 has been the principal sponsor of the workshop. Last year, Tata Trusts came on board with a three-year grant that enables a large section of the participants to attend the week-long course at no cost. However, funding for the foundation’s infrastructure and operation costs remains a challenge. The venture relies mainly on private donors, as government funding is difficult to find, says Dungarpur.

Sudhanshu Vats, group CEO and MD, Viacom18, rues the fact that India’s cinematic excellence has found no place in its collective history because of a lack of awareness. “I realised the gap in our collective consciousness when it comes to understanding film preservation and restoration. As an organisation we were keen to do our bit in this space and our search for an effective partner led us to FHF,” he says.

Dungarpur says the institute has trained about 200 archivists in four years. “More importantly, we have created awareness. The sad part is that there’s not much money in it — neither for me nor the cause, even though we are the only non-government archive in India. It’s ironic how producers would take those film cans to temples for puja before the release, but do so little to save it later,” he says.

Celluloid Man , which won two National awards and continues to enthral audiences at screenings worldwide even today, changed its maker’s life in a flash.

“I think it was not just a journey about PK Nair saab , nor about finding what happened to our cinematic heritage. It was also my journey of actually figuring out what I wanted to do. And setting up the archive was the biggest thing for us,” Dungarpur says.

Shail Desai is a Mumbai-based writer

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