Film Heritage Foundation: Aims to ramp up film preservation & restoration in India

In 2012, Cannes Film Festival saw the red carpet premiere of Uday Shankar’s 1948 classic Kalpana. Why did a Bollywood film, albeit a classic, receive a red carpet premiere 64 years after being made? The film’s print had been restored by Martin Scorcese as part of the World Cinema Foundation created by the filmmaker in 2007.

Three years hence, India is still to make a mark with film preservation and restoration.There have been efforts made in the direction, but the exercise is yet to gather the momentum archivists, filmmakers and broadcasters would like.

Shivendra Singh Dungarpur, film archivist, and founder, Film Heritage Foundation said: “Film preservation comes before restoration. If you don’t preserve your films, you will have nothing to restore and it has been proven that if celluloid films are stored in the proper conditions they can survive for a hundred years. India has already lost a colossal amount of its film heritage for various reasons.”

He adds that it is indeed ironic considering that despite having the most prolific and diverse film industry in the world, India has only one major film archive, the National Film Archive of India that undertakes the exercise of preserving films.

Currently, in India there are several labs who do digital restorations, but that is just one aspect of a full-fledged restoration. Restoring a film, not unlike restoring a work of art, can take months of work. It begins with research, the involvement of the director and the cameraman if they are still available, the search for the best possible source material and repair of the original camera negative or print before scanning and digital restoration. This was the process followed by Scorsese’s Film Foundation when they restored the film “Kalpana” (1948) directed by Uday Shankar at the L’Immagine Ritrovata lab in Bologna.

A few films have been restored in India – Mrinal Sen’s Kandahar, M S Sathyu’s Garam Hawa, Shyam Benegal’s Junoon and Guru Dutt’s Kaagaz ke Phool, but these are few and far between. NFDC has also digitally restored several films.

Internationally restored films are coming back to life. Restored films are premiered every year at major film festivals like Cannes and Venice. Many of them are released theatrically, digitally and are also brought out on DVD and Blu-ray. For instance, Criterion Collection, one of the premier DVD/Blu-ray companies in the world, restored Satyajit Ray’s “Apu Trilogy” and released it in theatres in the US as well as on DVD and Blu-Ray.

There is a growing awareness and interest in restoring Indian films in the last couple of years. Hollywood realized the importance of film preservation as far back as the ‘90s and the big studios now have their own archives that are constantly restoring classics from their libraries, often more than once if they feel the rapidly changing technology can give them a better result.

“As far as India is concerned, I don’t think the issue is so much the technology, but the attitude to film preservation and restoration and the lack of skilled manpower. This is why the Film Heritage Foundation – has a two-pronged approach to saving India’s cinematic heritage. We want to build awareness of the urgent need to save our cinematic legacy as well as build a trained workforce who can take this forward,” observes Dungarpur.

Some broadcasters are also doing their bit. Sony Pictures Network and Zee Entertainment Enterprises Limited both undertake or aid in restoration of films which then they telecast on their classic movie channels like Sony Max 2 and Zee Classic respectively.

Neeraj Vyas, senior EVP and business head, Sony Max, Sony Max 2, and Sony Mix said: “As a network, we feel responsible for doing our bit in preserving and restoring the older films. They may not rate or command money to compare with a new Shah Rukh (Khan) or Salman (Khan) film. However, they bring a lot of value in terms of variety and there is a huge audience loyal to classics. Moreover, being part of the history of films in India, these films can be considered rich heritage.”

Vyas adds that while there is little concerted effort by broadcasters as a unit currently, there definitely is scope to do much more for the cause. Every network is however doing its own bit. Viacom18 for instance has partnered with Dungarpur’s Film Heritage Association, helping drive awareness and promoting the cause in its capacity. The network also helps with organising an annual workshop film preservation and restoration in Pune every year.

Sudhanshu Vats, Group chief executive Viacom18 Media said: “We strongly believe that every enterprise has to be global and social at the same time. At Viacom18, we know for a fact that India is a country of storytellers; in fact the largest and oldest stories in the world come from here. And so we realize how important it is to preserve our cultural heritage for the benefit of the future generations. After a successful inaugural year, we have partnered with Film Heritage Foundation for the 2nd year and aim to create awareness about the necessity and importance of safeguarding what is ours!”

Apart from the workshops, the Foundation also intends to extend education and training professionals in the field over academic courses.

“Film preservation and restoration is a highly specialized field. Unfortunately in India, we have very little skilled manpower in this field. If we are to take up this cause seriously, then you need to build an indigenous resource of film archivists and restorers. The aim of the second is to start skilling people especially the NFAI personnel who are currently the custodians of our film heritage and to make participants look at this as a possible career option.

"Our long-term goal is to work towards introducing film preservation and restoration courses in film schools and institutes. While one cannot become a trained archivist or restorer after a 10-day workshop, we need to start somewhere as we are losing more of our films every day”, added Dungarpur.