Film Division officials requested Pune-based National Film Archive of India (NFAI) to accept these reels for preservation. But NFAI expressed its inability to do so because of space shortage at its own facilities.
Film reels ‘stored’ in the corridors of sixth floor of Films Division building on Peddar Road, Mumbai.
ATIKH RASHID
AS MANY as 11,000 film cans containing celluloid negatives of documentaries made by Films Division (FD) over the last several decades are being stored without any environment control in the corridors of its office in Mumbai. Reason: Lack of space, say officials.
FD officials requested Pune-based National Film Archive of India (NFAI) to accept these reels for preservation. But NFAI expressed its inability to do so because of space shortage at its own facilities.
According to information obtained under the RTI Act, the FD has sent 19,787 film cans to the NFAI in 21 tranches between September 1996 and December 2015 — but the NFAI can’t accept any more at the moment as the two vaults it has earmarked for FD films are full.
Until three years ago, these FD reels were stored in air-conditioned rooms on the ninth floor of its Phase I building on Peddar Road in Mumbai. But in 2016, it had to vacate the space after the Union I&B Ministry decided to house the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) in that space. The CBFC was earlier functioning from Walkeshwar.
The film cans were then shifted to the corridors of the sixth and seventh floors of the building, while 6,896 reels were sent to NFAI for safekeeping in three tranches. But 11,000 reels continue to be stored “temporarily” in the corridors.
In a communication dated November 14, 2018, the then FD Director-General Prashant Pathrabe sought the “urgent attention” of NFAI Director Prakash Magdum for preserving the “very valuable archival material”.
“…Still about 11000 cans of negatives are remaining in the film library in this office. It’s to state that these films are lying without air-conditioning and humidity control as Films Division does not have any proper storage facility. It’s important to mention that these negatives are very valuable and require proper preservation in specific conditions (of temperature and humidity),” Pathrabe wrote.
FD Director-General Smita Vats Sharma, who took charge recently, could not be contacted for comment as she is on tour abroad. Responding on her behalf, Anil Kumar N, officer-in-charge for distribution at Films Division, said: “Films Division gives utmost priority to the preservation and upkeep of its filmic material. All the valuable picture negatives are preserved in NFAI vaults. The remaining materials are being segregated and shifted to a place with air-conditioning and humidity control in the Phase II building of FD till film vaults are made available by NFAI.”
K L Senapati, Director (Administration), FD, said: “After the ninth floor was vacated for CBFC three years ago, these cans have been kept in their current place. We have contacted NFAI to take them but they too are helpless due to shortage of space.”
According to Senapati, “most of this material has been digitised”. However, experts say celluloid holds immense archival value even after digitisation.
Santosh Ajmera, officer on special duty at NFAI who heads the National Film Heritage Mission, says the NFAI plans to construct new state-of-the-art storage facilities at a three-acre plot near its Kothrud premises that was recently acquired from the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII).
Once the work is completed, there would be enough space available to safeguard not only Films Division material but also material from different sources and film labs,” said Ajmera.
The films contain original sound and picture negatives of documentary films made by Flms Division over the years.
NFAI officials say they are now planning to hire private facilities to store reels received from other agencies — a proposal has been sent to I&B Ministry.
Responding to an RTI query on the documentaries in the cans stored in the corridors, FD officials said they were in the process of compiling a digital list.
Subsequently, The Indian Express received the names of 50 documentaries whose “master positives” are stored in the corridors, including “I am 20” (1967), directed by S N S Sastry and produced by FD’s then chief producer Jean Bhownagary.
The documentary, which was recently posted on YouTube by FD, contains interviews of several young men and women who were born in 1947 about India as a nation, its present and future.
The list also includes “Mandu: The City of Joy (1957)” about the ancient capital of the Malwa kingdom in western MP; “The Grand Old Man of 19th Century” (1967) on the life and works of Jagannath Shankar Seth in building Mumbai as a modern city; and, “Akbar (1967)”, which won the national award for Best Educational and Motivational Film that year.
The first IFFI was organised by the Films Division with Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s “blessings”, at a paltry budget of Rs 1 lakh.
ATIKH RASHID
THE International Film Festival of India was born in Bombay in January 1952 but it was conceived six months prior in the Kashmir valley. The idea of organising such a festival of motion pictures, which would be a first for the East, was proposed to Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru by Films Division’s then Chief Producer Mohan Bhavnani when he was visiting Srinagar for a political event. Bhavnani, a filmmaker trained in Germany who had made several silent films after his return to India and was appointed to head the Films Division after it was established in 1948, had recently returned from a visit to Paris where he had attended a meeting of Film Experts Committee of UNESCO and was toying with the idea to hold India’s own film festival.
In an essay written in 1983, filmmaker K L Khandpur has described how the decision to organise the first film festival came about. As per his account, he was shooting a documentary for Films Division (Facing the Facts, 1951) in Srinagar with his crew when, on a Sunday afternoon, Bhavnani- who was staying in a houseboat at Dal Lake – summoned him. Bhavnani was to meet the then Information and Broadcasting Minister R R Diwakar and Prime Minister Nehru, who was visiting Srinagar to speak at a rally organised by National Conference ahead of the state’s plan to hold elections for the Constituent Assembly in August-September that year, later that day.
Weekly Screen announcing the government plans to hold an international film festival in India in its September 21, 1951 edition. (Credit: Screen)
Although the initial plan was to hold a ‘competitive film festival’ and the event was publicised such, the idea was later dropped after the International Federation of Motion Pictures Associations (IFMPA) objected to the prospect saying “only Venice and Cannes had been granted permission to hold competitive festivals” in that year. The festival was then categorised as ‘non-competitive representative show’.
Curtains went up on January 24 at the New Empire Cinema. I&B Minister Diwakar chaired the opening ceremony as PM Nehru, who was supposed to attend the event missed it due to some reason. It was a star-studded event with who’s who of the Bombay film industry attending it.
A total of 12 foreign countries had sent in their delegations to participate in the event. The largest among those was from USSR which had sent 13 members headed by Deputy Minister of Cinematography N Semenov, while Chinese had sent one with six members. The American delegation was headed by film director Frank Capra. Notwithstanding the Indo-Pak tension over Kashmir, Pakistan had sent a delegation consisting of actor Swarna Lata, director Shaukat Hussain headed by Sardar A Rehman.
Actor Suraiya with Hollywood director Frank Capra who headed the US delegation to first IFFI. (Photo Credit: Films Division)
The festival offered a bouquet of 40 international films and over 100 short films that were showcased, In Mumbai, the film shows were held at three open-air theatres that were erected at Azad Maidan apart from four other regular cinema houses namely the New Empire, Excelsior, Strand and Kum Kum. Among the films that proved popular among the audience were the Italian films Bicycle Thieves (De Sica, 1948), Rome Open City (Rosselini, 1945) and Miracle in Milan (De Sica, 1951); Japanese film Yukiwarisoo (Minoru Mtasui, 1951); British short film Dancing Fleece ( Wilson-Reiniger, 1950,) Soviet war film Fall of Berlin (Mikheil Chiaureli, 1950) and Hollywood films The Greatest Show on Earth (DeMille, 1952) and An American in Paris (Minelli, 1951). Indian entries for the festival were Awara (Raj Kapoor, 1951), Babla (Agradoot, 1951), Patala Bhairavi (Ketiri Reddy, 1951), Amar Bhoopali (V Shantaram, 1951) among feature films and Adivasi (National Education and Information Films) and Lest I Forget Thee (Singh Brothers) among documentaries.
In Delhi and Madras huge road parades of Indian film stars and visiting delegates were held that received huge response from the crowd which, in Frank Kapra’s words, made Indian politicians realise for the first time “the power of Indian film stars”. In Madras, a friendly cricket match between film starts was held at Corporation Stadium of Madras where Raj Kapoor’s “deadly bowling” grounded the opposing team to much delight of over 15,000 audience members.
PM Nehru attended the inauguration of the Delhi leg of the festival and President Rajendra Prasad hosted the guests and Indian film fraternity at Rashtrapati Bhavan.
An open-air screen erected for first IFFI at Azad Maidan in Mumbai (then Bombay). Photo Credit: International Film Festival of India)
Virchandra Dharamsey was a lad of 17 at that time. Now 84 and a well-regarded film historian, he recalls his experience of visiting the festival in Bombay. “In my memories, the first IFFI was like a fair. My interest in cinema has just begun at that time but I knew nothing about international cinema. I can hazily recall watching De Sica’s Miracle in Milan in an open theatre at the Azad Maidan. I also caught glimpses of several other films such as Japanese film Yukiwariso, (Italian) Rome: Open City and Bengali film Babla from the side without having to buy the ticket,” said Dharamsey.
The Film Enquiry Committee Report
Among the factors that led to the organising of the first IFFI including PM Nehru’s own interest in art and culture, an important one was the report of the Film Inquiry Committee that was submitted to the government exactly three months before the Srinagar meeting between Bhavnani, Diwakar and Nehru. The inquiry committee was headed by S K Patil – former member of Constituent Assembly of India and who later become Mayor of Bombay – and was constituted in 1949 to, among other things, suggest “what measures should be adopted to enable films in India to development into an effective instrument for promotion of national culture, education and healthy entertainment”. Among the members of the committee were filmmakers V Shantaram and B N Sircar.
After exhaustive research, interviews with over 300 prominent personalities including filmmakers, educationists, public representatives and journalists and studying memorandums submitted by over 250 important individuals, the committee submitted a report which called for widespread changes to improve its financial management and aesthetic quality of the films. The committee took the view that although the Indian film industry made significant progress on the technical aspects, it was lacking in content and the “medium’s potential for the education of the masses and nation-building” was not being utilised. The committee observed that for the Indian film, “the story remains a secondary consideration”, the play-back system is over-exploited, the dance sequences are used indiscriminately, the comedies “degenerates into the burlesque” and “hilarity and buffoonery is expressed through meaningless grins and gestures”.
In fact, the motive of the government to ‘reform Indian cinema’ by exposing the Indian filmmakers to better cinema traditions elsewhere in the world was evident in the message Prime Minister Nehru sent for the inauguration of the festival. Effectively rebuking the Indian filmmakers, he said in the message: “India, I’m told, is the second biggest film producer in the world, coming only after the United States of America. This quantity production is impressing, but I would like to lay stress on quality. I hope that the Indian film industry, which has made such great progress in the past, will make every effort to improve the quality of films also.”
First IFFI’s influence
Interaction with filmmakers from abroad and exposure to international films coming from Japan, Italy, France and Russia at the first film festival did influence the discourse around cinema in the country and also nudged filmmakers to experiment with the medium. This was especially true with the aesthetic of ‘realism’ as espoused in the neo-realist films that came from Italy and were the most appreciated among the foreign lot.
Still from Bimal Roy’s Do Bigha Zameen.
Among those who were directly and admittedly influenced by Italian films they saw at IFFI 1952, was Bimal Roy who immediately embarked upon making Do Bigha Zamin (1953) promising himself that it would be “as start and austere and will be shot on location” like Bicycle Thieves. For the film, he largely chose his caste from IPTA actors as opposed to well-known film stars and shot a majority of the film in streets of Calcutta and a nearby village. There are many obvious thematic similarities between Do Bigha Zamin and Bicycle Thieves with streets of Calcutta replacing those of Rome and the land-plot standing in for the stolen bicycle in the Italian masterpiece.
It is well known De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves was behind Satyajit Ray quitting his job in the advertisement industry and deciding to make his first film Pather Panchali (1952). (Although he had watched the film during his six-month stay in London in 1951, much before it was shown in Calcutta as part of IFFI).
“Thus within days of the festival, Italian neorealism provided a specific and concrete rallying point around what had been since the early 1930s an endemic Indian disavowal of popular cinema,” says film scholar Neepa Majumdar further arguing that the brush with neo-realism during first IFFI affected both the “parallel cinema movement” which developed in the with Ray, Ghatak and others but affected the thematic and aesthetic concerns of mainstream commercial products such as Booth Polish (Prakash Arora, 1954) and Footpath (Zia Sarhadi, 1953).
The festival also gave a fillip to the film society movement in India – by creating interest for world cinema among the locals and making the job of those who ran the societies easier. “Above all, the first IFFI which sourced films from various diplomatic missions in India, opened up a new avenue of sourcing films, almost free for the fledging film societies,” wrote VK Cherian in his book India’s Film Society Movement: The Journey and Its Impact.
The festival was wound up in Calcutta on March 5 1952. As per a gossip column published in ‘filmindia’ magazine’s April edition, the Films Division had actually earned a profit of Rs 7 lakh from the festival.
As per Dharamsey, the interest in world cinema that festival kindled among local Bombay cine-goers caused regular film theatres to play international hits (outside Hollywood) soon after the first IFFI. “I distinctly remember that months after the festival, Liberty Cinema ran Kurosawa’s Roshomon, De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves and Clouzot’s The Wages of Fear as regular shows,” he recalled.
Despite the success of the first festival, Indians would wait for nine years for the IFFI to return with its second edition in 1961.
(This essay was originally published in The Indian Express on November 23, 2019)
EXPRESS RTI: It aims at restoration of 1,050 feature films and 960 shorts; digitisation of 1,050 features and 1,200 shorts, construction of vaults of international standards, and training programmes.
ATIKH RASHID
When the National Film Heritage Mission (NFHM) was rolled out in November 2014 with the Union Cabinet approving Rs 597.41 crore, the National Film Archive of India (NFAI) in Pune was selected as the implementing agency. The scheme’s objective is preservation and restoration of India’s celluloid film heritage, the work to be undertaken from 2014-15 to 2020-21. It aims at restoration of 1,050 feature films and 960 shorts; digitisation of 1,050 features and 1,200 shorts, construction of vaults of international standards, and training programmes. Of the total allocation, Rs 291 crore is to be spent during the 12th Plan and Rs 306.41 crore during 13th. In the last three years, NFAI has received Rs 21.16 crore under NFHM. Half these funds went into settling an old liability that NFAI owed to a subsidiary of Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group, according to accounts accessed by The Indian Express under the Right to Information Act. The firm had been contracted for digitisation and restoration of films before NFHM was rolled out.
NFAI paid Reliance Media Works Limited Rs 10 crore in December 2014 to clear the “outstanding liability” after it received an approval for this from the I&B Ministry. In April 2015, Rs 2 lakh was additionally paid; this “cleared the liability totally”.
NFAI officials said that under the earlier project for digitisation and restoration, which was executed during the 11th Plan (2007-12), 566 films were digitised, including 329 that were restored. Bills for this work, submitted by Reliance Media Works between March 2011 and March 2012, and accessed by The Indian Express, were for Rs 38.71 crore.
“[The Rs 10.02 crore] was an outstanding amount, which could not be paid due to budget constraints during the 11th Five Year Plan,” said Prakash Magdum, NFAI director. “In fact, this was a kind of pilot project of digitisation in which some of the finest films from India were digitised, thereby making them accessible to cinema lovers. The objectives of NFHM were envisaged based on learnings from this project.”
NFAI spent Rs 3.80 crore on civil works, which included renovation and refurbishing of NFAI auditorium, installation of three new DCP projectors, modification of the director’s office, electrical works, renovation of toilets, construction of temporary sheds and parking area, thermal insulation of service blocks, and new workstations for staff. And Rs 3.25 crore was spent on purchase of new computers, storage equipment as well as on publicity including social media management.
Another Rs 3.77 crore was spent on payment to KPMG India, which won the contract for the consultancy firm for NFHM, and Prasad Labs that bagged the contract for condition assessment of the films with NFAI.
Besides, Rs 24 lakh and Rs 8 lakh were spent on buying film publicity material from hobbyists and domestic travel respectively. NFAI pays collectors of non-film material such as posters, stills, song booklets, press clippings at photos at various rates, ranging from Rs 100 per item belonging to contemporary times (since 1991) to Rs 1,000 per item belonging to the silent era.
On spending NFHM funds on civil works at NFAI, Makhdum said, “In order to fulfil objectives of NFHM, there is necessity for creating infrastructure environment which can be done in the government through major and minor works, which has changed the overall organisation setup and helped bringing it to modern, technology, equipped and state of art archive setup. Also enabling it to come closer to people at large.”
Apart from this, the I&B ministry had also formed a committee to review the work being done under the National Film Heritage Mission (NFHM) at the NFAI.
ATIKH RASHID
The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (I&B) has constituted a five-member expert committee comprising veteran filmmakers and film preservation experts to look into the condition of films as well as the storage vaults at the National Film Archive of India (NFAI). The committee will also suggest ways and means to preserve the films in a better manner. The committee comprises filmmakers Shaji N Karun, Ketan Mehta, Piyush Shah, former NFAI director K S Sasidharan and Shri Ponnaya, former chief of laboratory at Prasad Labs, Hyderabad.
Starting from September 2017, The Indian Express had published a series of news reports bringing to the fore glaring lacunae in the way celluloid films were being looked after at the Pune-based NFAI. Among these were the findings of an inventory carried out by a private firm for NFAI, which had claimed that as many as 51,500 film reels that were on accession records of the Archive were not physically present in its vaults.
Another news report had pointed out that thousands of film reels received from various sources by NFAI were lying in gunny bags. Yet another report stated that even after a major fire incident in 2003, the Archive lacked fire-fighting capacity, and nine important film prints were lying in a sealed film lab in Mumbai where NFAI had sent them for copying way back in 2007.
In March 2018, The Indian Express reported that due to NFAI’s failure to maintain the desired temperature and humidity levels within its vaults, a major chunk of film reels stored in the vaults were affected by deterioration — termed technically as vinegar syndrome. Earlier this week, this newspaper had published a report pointing out that three regional offices opened by NFAI in 1980s were non-functional for over a decade and no efforts were being taken to revive them.
The committee has been tasked with five specific responsibilities, namely to prepare a list of loss of films with archival value, suggest ways to salvage the National Film Heritage Mission, look into the condition of films and film related material at the Archive, suggest ways and means to restore them, and carry out a physical assessment of the condition of storage vaults.
An official with the I&B Ministry, who is privy to the development, said the Ministry decided to form a committee after going through a preliminary report submitted by Karun, following a surprise visit by him and Joint Secretary (Films) Ashok Kumar Parmar on April 4. Karun and Parmar had visited all film storage vaults at both the premises of NFAI in the city.
ALSO READ | ‘Vinegar syndrome’ ruining film treasure at National Film Archive, reveals data from film assessment project
“Two weeks ago, I had submitted a report to the Ministry based on my observations during the surprise check. I had suggested a few things that needed to be done for better storage of films at the Archive. Based on that, the five-member committee has been formed to probe the matter further,” Karun told The Indian Express. The filmmaker said the committee members will hold a meeting to decide the way forward. “The aim is to assess the damage that has been done to films stored at NFAI, find a way to avoid it in future and salvage the films that have been damaged,” said Karun.
Apart from this, the I&B ministry had also formed a committee to review the work being done under the National Film Heritage Mission (NFHM) at the NFAI.
The NFHM is a nearly Rs 600-crore project aimed at conserving, digitising and preserving the celluloid heritage of the country. Launched in 2014, it is being implemented by the NFAI.
The committee will look into financial as well as other matters pertaining to the NFHM. This committee comprises Parmar, Additional Secretary and Financial Advisor Ali R Rizvi, and Senior Economic Advisor Rohit Kumar Parmar.
Joint Secretary (Films) at the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Ashok Kumar Parmar, and Karun, arrived unannounced on Wednesday morning and visited all 19 storage vaults on NFAI’s premises at Law College Road and Kothrud. The two will submit a report to the I&B Ministry about their inspection.
ATIKH RASHID
Taking cognisance of a series of reports published in The Indian Express on the state of affairs at the National Film Archives of India (NFAI), a senior official from the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (I&B) and veteran filmmaker Shaji N Karun on Wednesday made a surprise inspection of the storage facilities at the institution.
Joint Secretary (Films) at the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Ashok Kumar Parmar, and Karun, arrived unannounced on Wednesday morning and visited all 19 storage vaults on NFAI’s premises at Law College Road and Kothrud. The two will submit a report to the I&B Ministry about their inspection.
“We have taken note of the issues that we found during our inspection and all this will be conveyed to the ministry,” Parmar told The Indian Express. Karun said that “being a film person”, I&B Minister Smriti Irani was herself concerned about the issues highlighted in the reports of The Indian Express, and that was the reason she had sent Parmar and him for a ‘preliminary inspection’.
“We will write a report and submit our observations to the ministry. This might be followed by a more detailed inquiry,” said Karun.
The Indian Express had reported on March 30 that NFAI often failed to maintain the desired temperature and humidity levels within its vaults, as a result of which several film reels had started showing signs of permanent damage. Data obtained by this newspaper pertaining to an ongoing assessment of film reels stored at NFAI showed that of the 58,670 reels checked till the end of November 2017, only 17,052 had remained unaffected by vinegar syndrome, a term used to describe the deterioration in acetate-base films. A total of 27,387 reels were in various stages of vinegarisation — from being mildly affected to being in a rapidly decomposing state — while 14,231 had reached a stage of irreversible damage.
Asked about its observations on the storage facilities at NFAI, Karun said the situation was “bad”. “In one of the vaults, we could not stand (due to the foul smell). We had to come out quickly,” he said.
Parmar said the ministry had also formed a committee to review the work being done under National Film Heritage Mission (NFHM) at the NFAI. The NFHM is a nearly Rs 600-crore project aimed at conserving, digitising and preserving the celluloid heritage of the country. Launched in 2014, it is being implemented by the NFAI. “A three-member committee will review the work being done under NFHM. The committee will inspect the financial as well as physical matters. It’s likely to visit NFAI next week,” said Parmar. The committee comprises Parmar, Additional Secretary and Financial Advisor Ali R Rizvi, and Senior Economic Advisor Rohit Kumar Parmar. In September last year, The Indian Express had published a series of news reports bringing out the findings of an internal NFAI assessment, which had claimed that as many as 51,500 film reels that were on accession records of the Archive were not physically present in its vaults.
The reports had also pointed out that thousands of film reels at NFAI had been lying dumped in gunny bags, that even after a major fire incident in 2003, the archive lacked fire-fighting capacity, and that nine important film prints were lying in a sealed film lab in Mumbai where NFAI had sent them for copying way back in 2007.
K S Sasidharan, who worked with NFAI for over two decades, serving at its director for five years before retiring in 2008, spoke to Atikh Rashid on these issues, and more.
ATIKH RASHID
IN September last year, The Indian Express published a series of reports on the state of affairs at the city-based National Film Archive of India (NFAI). Among other things, the articles mentioned the findings of a report that claimed as many as 51,500 film reels, which were on accession records of the Archive, were not present in its vaults. Last week, another report in the newspaper revealed that as per the ongoing ‘condition assessment project’ at the organisation, a large number of celluloid film reels stored at NFAI have reached critical level of decomposition due to failure to maintain ideal storage conditions inside its vaults.
K S Sasidharan, who worked with NFAI for over two decades, serving at its director for five years before retiring in 2008, spoke to Atikh Rashid on these issues, and more.
What would you say about the issues afflicting the NFAI as brought out in the reports in The Indian Express?
I have been reading them. See, NFAI has always had administrative and accountability issues. Can you imagine that even after 53 years of its existence, NFAI doesn’t even have an ‘organisational manual’ which lays down rules and procedures for smooth functioning. During my tenure as NFAI director, a draft for the manual was prepared. When it was placed before the Advisory Committee of NFAI for approval, a prominent member raised some silly objections that led to scuttling the project. P K Nair, who was on the committee, volunteered to prepare the manual but it never materialised.
In absence of such a document which lays down rules and procedures, officers can go on doing things the way they like. Any senior functionary will find it convenient not to have one because it brings restrictions on his authority to indulge in unlawful practices.
What about the more than 51,500 missing film reels? Officials say these could be the reels that were disposed of in 1995 and 2008. But records show only 28,400 were disposed then.
51,500 is too big a number to be entirely accounted for through disposals. When I was at NFAI (Pune headquarters), the disposal happened only once, in 1995. Although I was deputy director at that time, I was not involved in the whole process of disposal of films. The job was assigned to the then Film Preservation Officer by the Director.
Is it possible that these prints went out of NFAI and never returned?
I am not in a position to comment on this. Another explanation could be that the projection of number of films acquired by NFAI was not factual in the first place. This is entirely possible because the method to arrive at the total number of films with NFAI was flawed.
The numbers published in the Annual Report of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (I&B), which were in turn provided by NFAI, were deemed to be factual numbers. Successive directors relied on those figures and kept updating them by adding the number of films acquired by them during their time. For example, if the annual report for previous year says NFAI had 12,000 films and I acquired 800 more during the current year, while sending the annual report for that year I would send 12,800 as total number of films held by the Archive without physically verifying it.
It also became a number game. So every director focuses on acquiring more films and letting the Ministry know it. Now, from what you have reported, it’s obvious that those projections in the annual reports were fictitious. It’s a human tendency, the darker side gets darker while the brighter side gets projected out of all proportions.
Why wasn’t an audit of inventory done even once in the last 53 years, including during your tenure?
In government, you go by precedence which was that you needed to only add fresh arrivals to the figure supplied to the ministry the previous year. This is where the mistake crept in. Also, conducting a stock verification was very difficult. There wasn’t enough staff. There was no established mechanism. All the factors contributed to the confusion.
We published pictures of about 14,900 film reels dumped in gunny bags in halls at NFAI Phase II premise.
I don’t know what films those are… the best thing would be to segregate the material worth preserving in the Archive and to discard the junk. There has to be a mechanism for disposal of films that have deteriorated irretrievably. I don’t think NFAI has such a mechanism even today. This is where the relevance of a manual comes in.
About 17,000 film reels packed in gunny bags and boxes were sent to a private warehouse 40 km away from NFAI’s campus in February-March 2016. Prakash Magdum, director of NFAI, said that this wasn’t unprecedented and such shifting to private facilities had happened during P K Nair’s time as well.
It must have happened, but it never happened during my tenure. Also, if you are saying the reels deteriorated then why would you spend public money on transport and storage at a private warehouse? It should have been avoided at any cost.
We also found out and reported that prints of nine important films from the black and white era are locked inside a lab (now dysfunctional) in Mumbai, which was sealed in 2010 over a legal dispute.
I can tell you that it’s squarely the responsibility of the Film Preservation Wing to monitor the movement of the films at the Archive, whether they are going out for copying or being sent out for screenings. It’s the bona-fide duty of the Film Preservation Officer to ensure that the material is back at the Archive within the stipulated time. The time window used to be maximum two to three weeks.
In case of the nine films mentioned, very important material and copyright issues are involved too. If the material is not back with the Archive within time, you should smell a rat and adopt legal measures to retrieve the archival property.
You were NFAI director when the unfortunate incident of fire in the nitrate vault took place in 2003. You had to face a lot of criticism for loss of cinematic heritage. How do you see it now?
There was a departmental inquiry and it was found that the fire had started because of rough handling of the air conditioning system installed there, leading to a spark that caused the fire. The nature of nitrate films is such that once it catches fire, you won’t be able to douse it even if you bring all the fire tenders in the world till the last bit of the film is burnt out.
More importantly, I will tell you how things work at NFAI. Construction and maintenance of storage facilities is done by the Civil Construction Wing (CCW) of All India Radio. These are the people who have no cinematic sensibilities. Although they are responsible for day-to-day upkeep of film vaults and other facilities, they are not given any orientation training in cinema and its heritage value in the context of history and culture, to sensitise them adequately. Also, NFAI has no control over them. It’s still a problem.
NFAI fails to maintain the desired temperature and humidity within its vaults, causing rapid film decomposition; AC units break down frequently and remain unattended for prolonged periods, documents show.
In advanced stages of vinegarisation the film reel is rendered unsuitable to be projected or even copied. (Illustratinon: Atikh Rashid)
ATIKH RASHID
IN February 2009, P K Nair, the film archivist who is credited with setting up Pune-based National Film Archive of India (NFAI), wrote a letter to the Prime Minister’s Office, complaining that “25,000 reels of rare archival footage” at NFAI had been disposed of because the staff “could not stand the foul smell emanating from the reels”.
Nair, who retired as director of NFAI in 1991 but continued to keep an eye over the institution, said the reels disposed of contained “some rare national award-winning films for which no negatives or duplicate material exists anywhere in the country to the best of my knowledge”.
The ‘foul smell’ mentioned in his letter is the stench that emanates from acetate base film reels once they start decomposing after being exposed to heat and humidity. Preservationists call this ‘vinegar syndrome’ since the chemical released by films while decomposing is ‘acetic acid’, known commonly as vinegar.
In September last year, present NFAI director Prakash Magdum had told The Indian Express that the institution had disposed of a total of 28,400 reels in two tranches — in 1995 and in 2008. Nair, it seems, was referring to the second instance in his letter to the PMO.
Vijay Jadhav, director of NFAI when Nair made the complaint, passed away in 2010. Nair died in 2016. But the ‘vinegar syndrome’ continues to ruin the treasure of films stored at NFAI.
Information obtained by The Indian Express shows that a majority of the film reels stored at NFAI was affected by the ‘vinegar syndrome’ and a considerable number of them had been damaged irretrievably.
As part of the ‘Film Collection Assessment Project’, which is the first stage in the National Film Heritage Mission (NFHM) launched by I&B Ministry, NFAI is, among other things, gauging the extent of damage caused by ‘vinegar syndrome’ to its collection. While the project is ongoing, data from 10 of the 19 storage vaults shows that of the 58,670 reels checked with acid detection strips by the end of November 2017, only 17,052 had remained unaffected by the syndrome. A total of 27,387 reels were in various stages of vinegarisation – from mildly affected, to rapidly decomposing – and 14,231 had reached the stage where the film gets irretrievably damaged due to decomposition.
A Preservationist’s Nightmare
In 1940s, acetate film base, often called safety base, emerged as an answer to the ephemerality of highly-inflammable nitrate film which was the only available film base till then. Use of cellulose nitrate for photographic film was slowly phased out, with filmmakers relying more and more on ‘triacetate cellulose’ base. In fact, a majority of surviving nitrate film collection was transferred on acetate film, hoping that it will be secured for the future. Sadly, it soon became apparent that the safety base wasn’t stable either. While it was not inflammatory, the acetate film has the tendency of ‘deacetylation’ — breaking down into simpler compounds — when exposed to high temperature and humidity. The acid, thus, released then acts as catalyst for further deacetylation, causing rapid deterioration of the affected film and even infecting the un-damaged acetate films stored nearby.
In advanced stages of decay due to vinegarisation, the film shrinks, the image layers gets delaminated from the base, the film may become brittle, crystal deposits and bubbles are formed on the surface of the film. The film reel is, thus, rendered unsuitable to be projected, or, in most cases, even copied.
NFAI’s struggles with heat and humidity
The best way to avoid and check ‘vinegar syndrome’ is to store the film under controlled temperature (around 2 to 4 degree celsius for colour, 12-14 degrees for B&W) and relative humidity (25-30 per cent for colour films, 50 per cent for B&W). Lower temperatures and drier conditions slow the decomposition process and the films stored in right conditions may last for several centuries.
Perusal of the maintenance register at the vaults showed that air-conditioners and dehumidifiers installed inside the vaults often break down and remain in disrepair for months. (Atikh Rashid)
The systems installed to control temperature and humidity at NFAI, and their upkeep, are grossly unsatisfactory, documents obtained by The Indian Express show. Not only the air conditioning systems and dehumidifiers break down frequently but, more alarmingly, it sometimes takes four to six months to repair them.
I P Mishra, Executive Engineer (Electrical) Civil Construction Wing of All India Radio which is in-charge of setting up and maintaining infrastructure at NFAI, while speaking to The Indian Express in September last year, had blamed the continuous operation of the AC systems inside the vaults for frequents breakdowns. He said that since the spare parts needed for repair are difficult to procure, the repair work gets delayed.
“The air conditioning system run 24 X 7 which leads to wear and tear, resulting in breakdowns and need of maintenance,” Mishra had said.
Documents show that between November 2014 and November 2017, air-conditioning systems and dehumidifiers in Vault No 8, Vault No 9, Vault no.10 and Vault No.11 remained out of order for a prolonged period of time. Despite requests for repair by NFAI officials, the Civil Construction Wing (All India Radio) remained unresponsive sometimes for months.
The Result
The film condition assessment data accessed by The Indian Express shows that the shoddy upkeep at NFAI has taken a toll on the films, especially in vaults where temperature and humidity control devices remained dysfunctional.
The situation was worst in Vault No 8 where, of the total 7,591 reels on which AD strip tests were performed (of 8,067 reels stored in that vault), only 53 were unaffected by vinegarisation. Around 2,688 reels were in various stages of deterioration while as many as 4,850 reels had reached an acidity level of pH value less than 4 which damages the reels permanently. These reels contain over 300 films, including all nine double reels of Awaara, seven out of eight reels of a print of Do Bigha Zameen, all eight reels of release positive of Mother India, two prints of Kalia Mardan containing five reels each, and three prints of Sahab Bibi aur Ghulam.
Similar was the case in Vault No.11 and others (see box).
NFAI Director Prakash Magdum and Official on Special Duty (NFHM) Santosh Ajmera did not respond to queries despite multiple attempts to contact him. Former director K S Sasidharan pointed to peculiar maintenance system at NFAI which may be working to the detriment of the film heritage. While NFAI is custodian of the reels stored in the vaults, the responsibility of maintaining the vaults in ideal conditions of temperature and humidity is with CCW (AIR), whose officials do not have any training or understanding of film preservation.
“These people have no cinematic sensibilities. Although they are responsible for day-to-day upkeep of films vaults and other facilities, they are not given any orientation training in cinema and its heritage value in the context of history and culture. Also, NFAI has no control over them,” said Sasidharan who served as director between 2002 and 2008.
Speaking on the sidelines of the workshop, where 14 participants were imparted introductory training on film preservation practices, David Walsh and Mick Newnham said the situation in India was a valid case for film archiving to be done on a regional basis.
ATIKH RASHID
Film preservationists Mick Newnham and David Walsh who held a two day ‘Film Preservation in Practise’ workshop in Mumbai said that given its cultural diversity, area and high film output, it could be a better idea to have regional film archives in India in addition to a central body like National Film Archive of India (NFAI).
Mick, who worked as chief conservator with National Film and Sound Archive of Australia and Walsh, who worked with Imperial War Museum, London have an experience in the field of film preservation of over three decades. The workshop which was held on March 9 and 10, was organised by Film Heritage Foundation helmed by Shivendera Singh Dungarpur in association with International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF), Paris and Nehru Science Center, Mumbai.
Speaking at the sidelines of the workshop where 14 participants were imparted introductory training in film preservation practices, Walsh and Newnham said that situation in India was a valid case for film archiving to be done on regional basis.
“For a country like India which has an amazing cultural diversity, perhaps film archiving should be done more on regional basis. That might be a model that’s more successful for a country like India. For countries with much more homogenized culture, a centralized archive is more suitable. A few years ago, I visited Chennai where one of the first things that I noticed that although it’s a huge film industry producing films since 1914-1916, only a small number of Tamil films are present at National Film Archive of India. There could be any number of reasons for this,” said Newnham. “If there existed an archival facility at regional level, this situation could have been better. However, still there’s a need of a national overview, because in local governments, people think more about health, roads, infrastructure, education which are more pressing concerns for a local government. A suitable model would be that the funding and the overview should come from centralized body, while the actual management has to happen locally,” he said.
Walsh said that in case of multiple archives, it’s a must to have clearly demarcated jurisdiction to avoid a conflict and rivalry. “I can see that there’s an argument for having an archive for each reason. There are lots of countries in the worlds where they are different archives for different region and sometimes different archives for the same region. And it’s also common for them to have a conflict, if the jurisdiction is not defined clearly. Given the Indian landscape and the India’s film heritage being diverse and specific to different region, there are many advantages of having a national archive,” said Walsh.
Walsh said that having private organizations like Film Heritage Foundation comes with advantage of having flexibility and dynamism in the processes as they are not bound by governmental rules and protocols.
“Film Heritage Foundation is in fortunate position since they are not bound by decisions of a government which may be driven by factors that may not be in best interest of film heritage conservation. Such private bodies can be more active and dynamic. They are also fortunate that they are also not dealing with the Tsunami of films that is decomposing at a fast rate like at NFAI where they have inherited a major amount of the stuff with all the problems that come with it. They are kind of in a position where failure is almost certain because unless the government gives them the kind of funds that’s needed to conserve such vast heritage which will be huge amount of money,” said Walsh.
Both the experts opined that NFAI should make most of the opportunity afforded by National Film Heritage Mission (NFHM), a 597 crore project launched by Information and Broadcasting Ministry, as such projects happen only once in a while.
“The thing is that you would never get to do this kind of project, of this scale, twice. Rarely, a government would say ‘Let’s do another project for the things that we missed! It may happen in 20 years time but not immediately. It’s not going to be repeated in a reasonable time frame,” said Newnham.
Fourteen years since, the firefighting system at none of NFAI’s 27 vaults is functional. A decision to change the old firefighting system, installed in 1994, was taken in 2008; work started in 2015 and is still on.
January 2003 fire in nitrate vaults of the National Film Archive of India (NFAI) on the FTII campus.
ATIKH RASHID
ON January 8, 2003, fire broke out in a nitrate vault of the National Film Archive of India (NFAI) on the Film and Television Institute of India campus. In an hour and a half, all reels in the vault were reduced to ashes. Going by a statement by then MoS (I&B) Ravi Shankar Prasad in Rajya Sabha that February, NFAI lost 607 films in 5,097 reels in the fire. These included a number of pre-1950 films, including silent films from the early era of the Indian film industry, some of these by Dadasaheb Phalke and V Shantaram. NFAI asserted that most of the films destroyed had already been copied on acetate base, also called safety base since it’s less inflammable, hence the loss wasn’t as “grim as it was made out to be”. In addition to these classics, 544 reels that stored war footage in Italian, English, German and Russian were unique prints, not copied on any medium, and therefore lost from NFAI’s collection.
A high-level inquiry followed, seeking to fix responsibility and assess the safety system and suggest measures to avoid any repeat. Although the report of the inquiry was never made public, various media (including The Indian Express) reported, based on source-based information, that the committee blamed “sparks emanating from a faulty air-conditioner” in the nitrate vault and recommended that the material be transferred to freshly built vaults on NFAI’s Kothrud campus.
Fourteen years since, the firefighting system at none of NFAI’s 27 vaults is functional. A decision to change the old firefighting system, installed in 1994, was taken in 2008; work started in 2015 and is still on. The air-conditioning systems, too, break down frequently and sometimes take months for repair, according to those responsible for maintaining these systems. A picture published by Maharashtra Times in April shows pedestal fans being used to maintain the temperature in a vault, apparently due to the failure of air-conditioning.
The Principal Director Audit, Mumbai, conducted an inspection of NFAI between December 2013 and April 2015. As per its report, accessed by The Indian Express under the Right To Information Act, NFAI didn’t have enough firefighting provisions and “loss of this property (films and non-filimc material) can’t be ruled out in case of incident of fire”.”
“The films and other filmic materal acquired by NFAI were stored in temperature controlled film vaults. It’s very inflammable articles. However, during visit, of this premises it was found that there was not sufficient provision for firefighting system and not proper backup provision of valuable articles (Films). Due to non-availability of sufficient firefighting system in the premises loss of this property can not be ruled out in case of fire…,” the report states in part II(A), paragraph 2.
As per the report, when the audit team pointed this out to the NFAI administration, it was told the new firefighting system would be installed at the earliest with the work already taken up under the 12th Plan allocation for ‘upgradation of infrastructure’. “… In reply, the department accepted the fact and stated that the existing firefighting equipment installed in the film vaults is very old and is due for replacement… The work has been entrusted to CCW (E), All India Radio and same would be completed as early as possible. [The officials] further stated that regarding backup of filmic materials, guidelines from the competent authority will be obtained and action in this regard will be intimated to audit,” reads the report.
With firefighting and alarm systems yet to become functional, eight nitrate vaults and 16 safety base vaults at phase II and three underground vaults at phase I of NFAI continue to operate under the threat of fire. Asked about this, NFAI director Prakash Magdum said the work is in the “last stage of completion” and will be over within a month. “NFAI had the fire alarm system in place since 1994 along with Halon Gas fire fighting system. Eventually, Halon Gas system needed replacement with modern fire fighting system. The work is being undertaken by Civil Construction Wing (CCW) of AIR. For the first time, we are taking steps to install carbon dioxide flooding system which will be much more effective. The work at phase II is in last stage of completion and will be over within a month. This will ensure the safety of film collection including Nitrate and safety base vaults at NFAI,” said Magdum.
I B Mishra, executive engineer with CCW (Electrical), AIR, said the reason for the delay in completing work was that although the project was slated to start in 2008, funds were released only in August 2014. “The work could only start in the beginning of 2015 after release of funds. Also, since this is a very complex and specialised job with lots of designing involved, it’s progressing slowly. Nevertheless, we have in the testing phase for safety base vaults at Phase I and will commission them in one or two months. Following this we will move to other vaults,” Mishra said.
He said the air-conditioning system breaks down often because it’s operated day and night due to specific needs of NFAI. “Air Conditioning equipment were installed in 2007-08 in Phase II and aren’t very old. However, they are run 24×7 which leads to wear and tear resulting in breakdowns and need of maintenance,” Mishra said.
EXPRESS RTI: The documents show, additionally, that NFAI got to know of the dispute just a month after the premises had been sealed in 2010 as the owner had approached court.
Building of Kine Sixteen Lab in Mumbai, now sealed. (Express photo by Prashant Nadkar)
ATIKH RASHID
Tapan Sinha’s Arohi (1964) was in the first lot of celluloid films that reached National Film Archive of India (NFAI) for preservation, soon after it was set up in Pune in February 1964. Arohi, which released the same year as Satyajit Ray’s Charulata, won the Silver Leopard at the Locarno Film Festival and Diploma of Merit at the London Film Festival, besides the President’s silver medal for best feature film and best story award at the National Film Awards. It was the National Film Award Committee that had sent the “release print” to NFAI.
For the last 10 years, the print has been in a now sealed building in Mumbai, out of NFAI’s reach. Arohi is one of nine “important, unique celluloid film prints” that had been sent to Kine Sixteen Lab in 2007, only to be locked up in 2010 following a dispute between the “conductor of the lab business” and the owner of the property, according to documents accessed by The Indian Express and replies received to questions under the Right to Information (RTI) Act. The prints had been sent for duplication as they had become “smelly and shrunk”.
The documents show, additionally, that NFAI got to know of the dispute just a month after the premises had been sealed in 2010 as the owner had approached court. Yet NFAI officials have failed to get the custody of the prints even today — it is yet to file an intervention application in the civil court where the battle over the lab property is still on.
The films
The celluloid prints locked in the property include another Tapan Sinha film, Atithi (1965), which was nominated for four awards including the Golden Lion and Grand Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival. The other prints include Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s Anupama (1966).
Arangetram (1973) by Dadasaheb Phalke Award winner K Balachander marked Kamal Haasan’s debut in an adult role. Uthama Puthiran (1940) was the first Tamil film featuring an actor in a double role; it is also remembered for German technicians in the crew. Another Tamil film locked up is Ponni (1953) by A S A Sami and C S Rao. Bagha Jatin (1958) by Hiranmoy Sen portrays the life of the revolutionary freedom fighter of that name, while Veer Rajputani (1955) was directed by Jamshed “J B H” Wadia, pioneer of the action genre in Indian cinema. One film is listed as Dholak but the documents accessed do not give specifics; IMDb lists a rarely seen (just 5 votes) 1951 film of that name directed by R K Shorey, written by I S Johar and featuring Ajit.
Files read by The Indian Express show that NFAI had been sending deteriorating prints to Kine Sixteen Lab, located on the Jyoti Studio campus on Grant Road, Mumbai, for several years. It also sent celluloid raw stock, worth lakhs of rupees, for duplication of those prints. In 2007, NFAI sent 16 films including the nine that are now locked up; the rest have been returned.
NFAI director Prakash Magdum told The Indian Express that of the nine films locked inside the lab, copies of five films were in NFAI’s possession in one format or the other as per records available. On the other hand, in all its communications with the law and justice ministry, police and its lawyer, as well as in internal notes accessed by The Indian Express, NFAI has maintained that eight of the nine prints were “unique single copies”.
The effort
With work pending after the prints were sent, three years passed before NFAI officials sent an official to collect the originals and the raw stock. “It’s noticed that your landline is disconnected and you are ignoring calls on mobile which [we] find very disgusting as a business person,” NFAI film preservation officer Kiran Dhiwar wrote to Kine Sixteen “proprietor” Shyamala Ramani on April 21, 2010. “Now, we are deputing our representative to collect our film material sent for laboratory work time to time and the completed work of the subjects as per our pending orders.”
It was after this visit that NFAI officials realised that the lab had shut and been locked months earlier; that “Mrs Shyamala Ramani”, whom NFAI had addressed as “proprietor”, was “conductor of the business”; that litigation was pending between Ramani and Homsi Homi Mistry, the owner of the business as well as the premises. The laboratory was sealed after Mistry allegedly took “forcible possession” without allowing Ramani to take out her valuable articles, which included the film prints and raw celluloid stock worth Rs 35 lakh.
NFAI contacted Mistry’s lawyer requesting her to allow them to inspect the premises and take custody of the prints. According to documents, the lawyer turned down the request and asked NFAI officials to approach Gomdevi police station. The senior police inspector at Gomdevi allegedly refused to let NFAI officials in, citing the fact that the matter was pending, and asked them to approach the civil court for permission, the documents show.
Over a year more passed before NFAI officials wrote to the Union law ministry requesting it to appoint a lawyer for arguing NFAI’s case through an intervention application. Five years after that, NFAI hasn’t yet approached the court with its plea. NFAI officials said they are doing their best to get the possession of the reels.
“Kindly understand that this matter is almost 8-9 years old,” said Magdum, the NFAI director. “Initially help from police department was sought. As soon as I came to know about this matter, NFAI has initiated legal proceedings as per government process. The government counsel has been appointed in order to take up this case in the court of law for recovery of said material and we are actively pursuing the matter so that the films can be brought back.”
Advocate Vinod Joshi was engaged by the law ministry’s Department of Legal Affairs in September 2012 to represent NFAI. Till today, however, no case has been filed, documents show. “I would not comment about the matter until there are written orders to do so from the [legal affairs] department,” Joshi said, when contacted.
Man Bites Dog 