History of Indian films in 8,000 mins on NFAI site

Pune: The National Film Archive of India (NFAI) has made available on its website its Oral History Project, featuring interviews with actors, filmmakers, producers and technicians from Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, English and Bengali film industries.

The interviews are more than 8,000 minutes long.

While the interviews were recorded mostly in the late 1970s and mid-1980s, those were upgraded in 2008, and footage and images of the interviewees were added to each of them. The interviews are available on https://nfai.gov.in/audio_interview.php

The longest of these, according to the NFAI, is an interview with the recently departed Bengali film actor Soumitra Chatterjee, which runs for more than nine hours. “These interviews are generally about their lives in the industry, how they entered the film world, or the important roles they played, or some of the iconic directors they worked with, and what has been their experience in the industry. We have now collated all these interviews into one link on our website, and anyone can access it.We are also making available the transcripts of these interviews in English,” said Prakash Magdum, the NFAI director.

There are interviews with personalities in Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, and Telugu film industries, among others, along with some interviews in English as well, such as the one with JBH Wadia, the patriarch of the Wadia Movietone studio, which became famous for bringing in Mary Ann Evans, better known as the stuntwoman Fearless Nadia, into the film industry. Also, part of the project features actors such as Nilu Phule, as well as PG Bhosale. The project, released on the birth anniversary of film pioneer Dadasaheb Phalke, also features some of the associates in his journey in the film industry, such as Phalke’s daughter Mandakini Athavale, and make-up artist Sahadevrao Tapkire.

“Tapkire’s story is extremely interesting as he started off with Phalke doing small, bit roles. He recognised that he was not going anywhere in his acting career, so he focused on being a make-up artist, and Phalke helped him in his journey. He was later asked to come to Chennai by SS Vasan of the Gemini Studios, and he lived and worked in Chennai for more than 25 years,” the NFAI director added.