The Restoration Man

But when Mumbai-based ad filmmaker Shivendra Singh Dungarpur visited the archives two years ago,he was shocked to see its condition. While prints of a host of films were spotted languishing in the vaults,under inappropriate temperatures and amid cobwebs,Dungarpur saw 80-year-old Nair’s legacy rotting away. “I decided to make a documentary on Nair. It is because of this man that we still have prints of nine silent Indian films,” says Dungarpur,an FTII graduate,whose first full-length feature titled Celluloid Man is currently the talk of many film festivals. The film was recently screened at 2nd Cinema Ritrovato (Cinema Re-discovered) Festival in Bologna,Italy. It will be screened at the New York Film Festival and Mumbai Film Festival in October.

To make Celluloid Man,Dungarpur roped in 11 of the country’s best cinematographers who have been influenced by Nair’s work and believe strongly in the need to preserve these films. Another reason for choosing cinematographers such as Aveek Mukhopadhyay and RV Ramani was that these people are trained to work with 16 mm film,that has been used for Celluloid Man. “This one had to be shot on film and not on a digital camera. I wanted it to be a black-and-white movie on film. That is when I could be completely honest with the whole idea of making this,” says Dungarpur about the film that has now been blown up to 35mm for screenings. He sourced black-and-white film from Kodak’s headquarters in New York as it is not available in India.

The film that opens with Nair’s interview inside the vaults of NFAI also features interviews of several filmmakers. These include Polish filmmaker Krzysztof Zanussi and Indian filmmakers Saeed Akhtar Mirza,Gulzar,Naseeruddin Shah,Shyam Benegal and Mrinal Sen. “Two of the more memorable interviews were with Dilip Kumar and Saira Banu,” he says.

Dungarpur also went to several places across India to capture the commitment of Nair. One of his memorable trips was to Ninasam,KV Subbanna’s organisation in Heggodu,Karnataka. Thanks to the films shown by Nair here,the villagers there are well-versed with the best of Indian and international cinema,including Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali and Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon. One of the major hurdles in making the film was to get NFAI’s permission to shoot some portions with Nair inside the vaults.

Dungarpur was recently in the news for travelling to Cannes with Uday Shankar’s Kalpana after he facilitated its restoration at the Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Foundation. But the film is stuck again in bureaucratic wrangles and will not be screened in India anytime soon because of a certain litigation against it. “We worked so hard to acquire the film. My assistant Manju would sit outside the NFAI office for days before we got the prints for restoration. After it came back from Cannes,it was again stuck with customs.This film is a national treasure and the government needs to be more sensitive about it,” says Dungarpur,who is now working on a film on Czech filmmaker Jiri Menzel.