The vaults of the National Film Archives of India (NFAI) — home to rare, extremely fragile prints of hundreds of motion pictures, some nearly a century old—went without power for over 24 hours last week.

The films are stored at carefully controlled temperature and humidity levels: minus 2 degrees Celsius and 25 per cent for colour prints and 16 degrees and 50 per cent for black and white. It is not known what damage the power outage caused them. Some 10,000 reels were affected.

The Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Company Ltd (MSEDCL) cut supply after the severely cash-strapped NFAI failed to pay power bills for three consecutive months. NFAI initially tried to dismiss the incident as a two-hour outage, but came clean after the power supplier confirmed the cut and the reason for it.

Once the supply went, NFAI could not operate its back-up power generators because it had no money for the diesel, said an officer who requested anonymity.

“We have no funds, for paying the power bills of the vaults, not even enough to keep sufficient supply of diesel in store for the generators. Now we are asking all those whose films are preserved by us for many years to start sharing the financial burden,” the officer said.

Film Preservation Officer K.H. Dhiwar said the power cut lasted for over 12 hours. He said he had “inspected the vaults and found the films to be safe”. He added, however, that “if any damage had to occur, it would not be apparent immediately, but only in due course”.

... contd.