Losing The Plot

“Of the 1,100 films India produces every year in 14 languages — most of which are made by Bollywood — we only select five to 10 per cent for archival,” admits Kiran Dhivar,film preservation officer at NFAI.

This privileged lot comprises of films made by National Film Development Corporation,National Award-winning films,movies that travel to international festivals and those that run at the box-office for more than 100 days.

However,the process itself is restricted to the listing of a handful of technical details such as gauge and base,number of reels and spool,censor length and so on. Beyond this,all one can find is the year of production,the director’s name,the production company,copyright owner,language,subtitles and year of receipt.

P K Nair,founder director of NFAI,admits to a huge gap in the process,but feels the organisation is doing its best,given the limitation of resources. Dhivar attributes this shortcoming to budgetary constraints. “Procurement of these handful of films takes up most part of our annual budget,since they come at a price. And then,there is lack of space to store the physical prints,” he rues, adding,“Yet,we try to document as many films as we can. The basic documentation that we carry out is open for researchers to refer.”

However,going by the statistics,it is clear that the worst hit of the lot is regional cinema since most non-Hindi films go unaccounted for. To date,the basic data of only 3,162 films has been archived by NFAI. Of these,1,228 are Hindi films,38 are Assamese,333 are Bengali,31 Gujarati,105 Kannada,225 Malayalam,224 Marathi,31 Oriya,13 Punjabi,270 Tamil,130 Telugu and eight Urdu,apart from 102 films in other languages such as Bodo,Manipuri,Kashmiri,Khasi and the like.

Alluding to the relevance of archival of all Indian films,Nair feels a project of this scale is challenging but can be made possible through a tie-up with the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC).

“Unlike NFAI,where we need to procure every film in order to archive it,the censor board registers each film before its release and makes for a good source of information,” he points out.

However, the NFAI had made a similar attempt in late 1970’s that went on till 1983,where B V Dharap of the CBFC had taken the initiative for detailed documentation. He brought out film annuals by compiling details about films released in one year by taking inputs from CBFC records. In fact,Rajadhaksha’s book sought inspiration from this very project. However, the partnership could not continue because of Dharap’s demise. No similar attempts have since been made.

Though NFAI seems keen to take up little responsibility,Dhivar claims they are taking baby steps towards it. There are plans to update the archival software. There is also an attempt to ensure that some of the important yesteryear’s films are not lost forever. “Thirty years ago,certain films were not considered important but today,their value is tremendous,” says Dhivar.

The NFAI has,in the last year,procured old regional films like the Bengali film Hatey Bazarey (1967),Tamil films Prarthanai (1973) and Pannakkrapillai (1968),along with recently produced films like Oru Pennum Randaanum (2008,Malayalam),and Gulabi Talkies (2009,Kannada).

“We’re trying to acquire such old films and update our archives,” he says.