#Cinema
By: Shivendra Singh Dungarpur
I never thought an action as ordinary as reading an article in a magazine would turn my life on its head. In 2010, I was a filmmaker with a flourishing career, shooting four commercials a month, travelling the world, with barely time to breathe between projects. It was then that I read an article in which Martin Scorsese spoke about a festival named Il Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna, Italy, dedicated to restored films.
I had never heard of a festival of restored films before or even that films could and were being restored. Curiosity aroused, we travelled to Bologna to attend the festival. It was a revelation. We discovered a new world of film archivists and restorers dedicated to preserving, restoring and screening films from around the world, some films dating back to the birth of cinema over a century ago – some of them showcased beautifully with live accompaniment in the magnificent medieval Piazza Maggiore.
Yet there was a glaring absence of restored Indian films and Indian archivists that gave us pause to think about the state of India’s film heritage.
DOCUMENTING THE CELLULOID MAN
On my return from Bologna, I went to see the film vaults that housed the film collection of the National Film Archive of India (NFAI) in Pune along with P.K. Nair, the former director of the NFAI. We were greeted with the sight of rusting cans lying in the grass, thick cobwebs hanging from the shelves, vaults where the temperatures were awry and Mr. Nair’s old office turned into a junkyard. It was heartbreaking to see a person’s life’s work reduced to this, a legacy forgotten. I thought I could shoot a bit of footage about the condition of the archive that would highlight the urgent need to take corrective action.