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Journalism of Courage
Written by Neha Rathod
At Pune’s National Film Archive of India (NFAI), time lives in stacks of magazines, monographs, and posters that map Indian cinema’s rich and restless history. These relics don’t just chronicle films — they capture generations of fashion, fantasy, literature and gossip in the same rack.
Walk into the library looking for an old documentary and you might walk out having discovered a 1970 magazine whispering about a “just good friends” romance, a hand-painted poster of Sangam that took weeks to make, a Satyajit Ray essay on the grammar of cinema, and a script of a film that never saw the light of day.
“NFAI has preserved everything that made Indian cinema, from the posters that lured you in, the magazines that made you gossip, the critical writing that made you think and the scripts that almost became classics,” says manager Jasbir Singh Baidhwan.
The Magazine Era
Start with the magazines because that’s where the fun is. In the quiet reading room of NFAI are more than 100 periodicals in various Indian languages, part perfume of old paper, part ghost of forgotten stardom. Nostalgia hums across the shelves holding stories that once shaped how millions experienced cinema.
Every issue, from Filmfare to Madhuri, whispers of a time when stars didn’t post stories; they posed for them. “You can scan a page here but you can’t scan the feeling of those times,” says the librarian.
The Gossip That Never Aged
Like time capsules dipped in gloss, these magazines preserve film gossip from the 1930s till the dawn of the digital era. Pull out a 1985 Madhuri and you step back in time as the cover shows a perfectly coiffed Dimple Kapadia in a retrospective celebrating her and Rajesh Khanna’s on-screen chemistry — and the much-publicised love triangle with Tina Munim.
Flip through a Star & Style from 1996 and headlines scream: “Hot Rumours: Madhuri Dixit Married!” Nearby, a CineBlitz cover from the same year declares: “Shah Rukh Khan: Really Hot with Women!” alongside “Will Jackie’s Second Marriage Shatter Ayesha?” and “Subhash Ghai’s Woman Caught Semi-Nude!” Kajol chimes in: “Industry men don’t turn me on.”
“People come here to dive into cinema’s past — flipping through magazines, posters, photographs, and rare monographs that map decades of stardom,” says the manager. “Students, writers, and filmmakers study how celebrity culture evolved, tracing how fascination with stars has endured.”
The research born in these stacks often turns into academic papers, documentaries, and cultural writing — shaping how India remembers its cinematic past.
The literary work
Tucked between brittle film journals, you might find a copy of Developing Story Ideas, an old Focal Press guide to screenwriting, or Mirror of the Mirror: A New History of Art, showing how Indian film posters borrowed from folk and myth, turning actors into living canvases. Nearby, the Marathi book My Name Is Khan by Isac Mujawar traces Hindi cinema’s journey, from the romantic Kumar Kapoor era to the action-fueled Khan years.
A shelf away sits Satyajit Ray’s Film India monograph beside Somnath Ray’s essay on early pioneer Hiralal Sen. These are precise, intellectual, and quietly balance the gossip-laden exuberance of film magazines. The former might dissect a mise-en-scène while the latter mourns a celebrity breakup.
The contrast makes you smile; proof that cinema has always been both art and emotion.
Different Decade, Same Anxiety
Moral panic has always followed cinema, though the targets have changed. A 1972 editorial debates whether on-screen kissing was immoral, with reader letters filled with outrage. Today, the same debates play out online — over OTT intimacy, bold photoshoots, or a star’s Instagram post. The medium has changed, but the fascination and judgment remain.
The Posters That Stopped Traffic
Between sepia covers and glossy spreads, posters of Padosan, Kashmir Ki Kali, and Sangam look on — from Sunil Dutt and Saira Banu to Shammi Kapoor and Sharmila Tagore, with a young Kamal Haasan from a Tamil classic peeking through. They seem to still be performing — their effort and charm captured forever, from an age when presence, not pixels, made a star.
Along the stairway, more posters speak — Shammi mid-dance, Madhubala’s smile promising romance, Raj Kapoor in full Technicolor drama. Each brushstroke is a reminder that posters weren’t ads; they were invitations to fall in love with cinema.
In the Streaming Age
With everything now streaming and searchable, why do people still travel to NFAI? Because touching a 1968 magazine connects you to time in a way a PDF never will. But the archive isn’t frozen in nostalgia. Every film, magazine, book, and poster is being digitized — preserved and made accessible worldwide. A student in Pune and a researcher in Tokyo can both study Ray’s essays without touching the fragile originals.
Established in 1964 and funded by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, NFAI does more than store. It acquires and restores films, organizes screenings, trains archivists, and collaborates with UNESCO and international archives.
The Memories That Refuses to Fade
Students and researchers often walk in — someone tracing the evolution of film magazines, another recording a podcast on 1990s item numbers. The work of preserving, cataloguing, digitizing, and sharing never really stops.
The goal is simple: to help anyone who wishes to understand Indian cinema — not just the films, but the world built around them. The glamour and the gossip. The art and the arguments. The scripts that became legends and the ones that disappeared.
All of it quietly breathes under one roof in Pune — keeping Indian cinema’s story alive, frame by frame, name by name, reel by reel.
Neha Rathod is an intern with The Indian Express
