‘Preserving films means preserving history, culture and memories’

Shivendra Singh Dungarpur is an award-winning filmmaker, archivist and restorer and the founder-director of Film Heritage Foundation. He tells Avijit Ghosh why we need to preserve films and what are the projects he is currently engaged with.
India produces the highest number of films in the world. How aware are we about the need to preserve them?
■We Indians are crazy about cinema.But we shy away from the fact that the moving image is an art form integral to our social and cultural heritage and a visual document of our times. We look at it purely through the prism of commerce. Which is why we have lost a colossal amount of our film heritage and continue to lose films every day.
The statistics are shocking. According to researcher and historian Virchand Dharamsey, 1,338 silent films were made in India. Only 29 survive, many in fragments and some as short as 149ft. Of the 124 films and 38 documentaries produced by the film industry in Chennai (formerly Madras), only one film survives, Marthanda Verma (1931). The talkies don’t fare any better. India’s first talkie, ‘Alam Ara’ (1931), was sold for its silver by the film’s producer Ardeshir Irani’s son. Most of the first talkies in the regional languages don’t exist. It is estimated that by the late 1950s, we had lost 7080% of our films.
You trained as a filmmaker at FTII, Pune. What attracted you to the preservation and restoration of films?
■ I was immersed in filmmaking when I read an interview of Martin Scorsese where he spoke about a festival dedicated to restored films in Bologna. My curiosity took me to the festival in 2010. It was an eye-opener. I discovered a whole new world of film archivists and restorers dedicated to preserving and restoring films rather than making films.
While I was making ‘Celluloid Man’, the devastating loss of our film heritage slowly revealed itself. I realised that this was a cultural emergency and saving our film heritage had to be taken up on a war footing. We couldn’t pass the buck anymore and certainly could not imagine this to be the government’s sole responsibility.
Dumped reels of old films often end up with scrap dealers who strip it for silver. The cans are used to make kitchen utensils. Can you tell us about the unusual places where you have found films?
■We find films in flea markets, under beds and in cupboards, abandoned in labs, studios, warehouses and old cinemas. We have developed a network of people all over the country to help us find films. Recently, we found the original negative of Uttam Kumar’s ‘Chhoti Si Mulaqat’ (1967) and Gulzar’s ‘Maachis’ (1996) along with a trove of documentaries in the alleys of suburban Mumbai.
It is heartrending to see heaps of film cans propping up shanty walls, in kitchen lofts, leaning against clotheslines in bylanes where films are stripped for silver and film cans repurposed as kitchen utensils. In 2015, a filmmaker friend gave us a reel of film wrapped in a newspaper, which turned out to be the last surviving reel of the first Konkani film, ‘Mogacho Aunndo’ (1950), directed by Al Jerry Braganza. I found the original negative of ‘Bharosa’ (1963)’ starring Guru Dutt’ at a scrap dealer’s. Films are sold in Chor Bazaar by the kilo: 8mm films for Rs 300 per reel; entire films on 16mm for Rs 4,000 and 35mm films for Rs 100 per kg.
Restoring which film has given you the maximum satisfaction? And why?
■We choose hidden gems – films in danger of being forgotten or lost. We are very proud that two films that we recently restored – Aravindan Govindan’s ‘Thamp’ (1978) and Aribam Syam Sharma’s ‘Ishanou’ (1990) were selected for a red-carpet world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in 2022 and 2023, respectively.
In both cases, the restorations were very challenging and took months of painstaking manual work as the source film elements were in poor condition. Hours of meticulous and painstaking manual work went into the digital restoration, clean-up, managing the grain, and colour correction of both films. That required constant coordination between Ramu Aravindan and Shaji N Karun, who shot ‘Thamp’, and Aribam Syam Sharma and me in the case of ‘Ishanou’ to ensure that we stayed true to the original creator’s vision. The restored ‘Thamp’ has been screened in venues and festivals all over the world, including the London Film Festival and Il Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna. Last month, Second Run released a special edition Blu-Ray of the restored film. ‘Ishanou’ will also begin its second life soon.
What are the current projects you are working on?
■We have several restoration projects in the pipeline, including Nirad N Mohapatra’s Odia classic ‘Maya Miriga’, Shyam Benegal’s ‘Manthan’, and John Abraham’s ‘Amma Ariyan’. We are also working to facilitate the restoration of four Bimal Roy classics – ‘Do Bigha Zamin’ (1953), ‘Devdas’ (1955), ‘Madhumati’ (1958), and ‘Bandini’ (1963).
Film Heritage Foundation has also instituted a Lifetime Achievement Award for projectionists who have been so instrumental in showcasing our celluloid heritage, but have been overlooked and forgotten despite their immense contribution. We are also collaborating with the International Film Federation of Archives for the Biennial AudioVisual Archival Summer School in Delhi in October this year, a 10-day film preservation and restoration workshop open to applicants from around the world.
What needs to be done to create a better climate and friendlier conditions for film preservation and restoration in India?
■Film preservation and restoration requires funding and resources. While people come forward to donate and deposit material, funds for preservation are hard to come by. Legacy producers and copyright holders should be contributing towards the preservation and restoration of their films. Contemporary filmmakers should be building a preservation budget into their production budgets. When you preserve films, you preserve history, culture and memories.