For a people so tuned into the marvels of multiplexes and accessibility of DVDs, documentaries lie on the obscure fringes of their entertainment agendas. Which is perhaps why cinema halls have done away with the mandatory showing of documentaries before running the regular films. In an effort to revive documentaries, the Films Division is now putting in money and mettle. From holding film festivals and digitising the existing archive to making them available on the Net and negotiating with mulitplexes, the institute is trying hard to infuse life into the near dead medium.

First formed by the British in 1942, the Information Films of India was rechristened the Films Division in 1948 when Jawahar Lal Nehru felt the need for an official body. Mohan Bhavani took over as its first chief producer and set about the task of churning out documentaries to spread social messages and information. In 1980s, the institution also started making short fiction films for the rural audience. Today, the Mumbai-based institute houses documentary films on 8,000 subjects and has 18 lakh cans of films in its four-storeyed library, some with rare footage as that of the Independence day. “There was no media officially appointed to cover the day in 1947. So the recording was done by private cameramen,” says Kuldeep Sinha, chief producer of the Films Division.

Now, the Division is trying to save such footage by digitising them. “Preserving them in a city like Mumbai with high humidity has been tough. The rolls are beginning to decompose,” says librarian R.G.K Prasad. The process started two years ago and nearly 5,000 documentaries have already been digitised. It will take another six months to complete the job, says Sinha. The second phase of digitisation will be celluloid restoration where the damaged prints will be restored from the negatives of the original rolls. The third phase will comprise restoration of the poor sound recordings, wherein fillms with speeches by Mahatma Gandhi, Nehru, Subhash Chandra Bose and others shall be retrieved.

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