Celluloid revamping

While the NFAI has been working on this task for close to 46 years now,the agency has had problems manifold and this effort by the government comes in as a very welcome step towards preservation and restoration. Says Vijay Jadhav,director,NFAI,”We currently have a collection of 6,500 titles,which is not very impressive; it should have ideally been around 20,000 titles. We need to give emphasis to collection of this rich material,before it is destroyed.”

The project will see NFAI digitise,restore and preserve prints from films belonging to not just the National Film Archives but also the Children’s Film Society of India,Films Division and NFDC. Initially,the mission aims at tracing the lost films,costumes,properties and even equipments and get as many items as possible in the government’s collection. This step is in itself a huge exercise as the film archives and such materials might be scattered all over the country and even abroad. The most interesting feature of the mission is the digitisation process that will be taken up in full swing. Along with it,several films would be restored by using automatic and manual softwares. The restoration process as a whole is a costly one with movies like Ben-Hur and Gone with theWind retouched with a budget of 200 million dollars.

Ujjwal Nirgudkar,technical director for Film Laboratories,Mumbai,says,”Back in the early 1990s,film base with acetate was being used which if not stored well,did not last long. In fact ‘vinegar syndrome’ was the name given to films which were damaged because of improper storage. As of now,converting a film into digital and then restoring it is a costly process and a laborious job but an essential one. As part of this mission,we are planning to restore films that are really old and need conservation urgently.” The digitisation of films is also a welcome step since the introduction of the high defintion (HD) viewing technology. Experts believe that old tapes may not be in viewing condition and hence if converted to HD technology,might help in various commerical applications too. The project is envisaged to be completed within a span of five years and the target is to achieve digitalisation of 8,000 films and restoration of 2,000 films.

Interestingly,the NFAI is also looking to convert this project into a commerically viable one. Says Jadhav,”As per the copyright act,any film released 60 years back,prior to 1949 is copyright free,and since the government will be incurring expenses on this project we are looking into an agreement and a possibility of releasing the films in DVD forms for general public. This will also ensure that the general public can see this rich material.” While the project will spearhead the work of conservation,it also will initiate a data viewing arrangement for film researchers,a feature that was initially lacking in the NFAI but has been a part of the film archives all across the world. With the year 2013 being the year that Indian cinema completes 100 years,this project,if implemented well,comes in at the right time.

Preserving for posterity
* Posters
* Properties like the famous cap and muffler used by Dev Anand in Guide
* Screenplays
* Stills
* Costumes
* Vintage Equipment