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.”

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.

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.

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.