Vaulting Ambition

Celluloid Man,a documentary on PK Nair,the grand old man of archiving in India. Thanks to Nair’s efforts,people in a tiny village are well-versed with some of the most iconic films in the world.

Made by Mumbai-based ad filmmaker Shivendra Singh Dungarpur,Celluloid Man,shot on 16 mm film,is a homage to Nair,the founder of National Film Archives of India (NFAI). The film that has been doing the festival rounds for some time now and has already won two national awards,will be released on May 3.

“We don’t preserve history in India. Unlike fine arts,drama,dance and music,films in this country have never been accepted as part of our cultural heritage. The problem begins here,and that is why we have lost so many films in India,” said an emotional 80-year-old Nair at the first Delhi screening of the film. “When it came to Sangeet Natak Academy and Lalit Kala Academy,they had a distinct identity. But films were considered a bastard art as compared to other art forms and that is why the government was apprehensive about creating any film organisation,” said Nair,talking about Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru’s attitude towards films.

When Paramesh Krishnan Nair set foot inside Film and Television Institute of India (FTII),Pune,in March 1961 as a research assistant,he came with the cherished dream of becoming a famous filmmaker one day. But then he did not know he would go on to become the Hery Langlois of India. Students of FTII,including Dungarpur,remember Nair as a shadowy figure in the darkened theatre who was always present at screenings,“scribbling industriously in a notebook by the light of a tiny torch,winding and unwinding reels of film,shouting instructions to the projectionist and always watching films”. He was a special go-to man if anyone at FTII wanted to watch a particular film. “Things were not digital back then. And if Nair sir saw that a student was interested,he would go out of his way to screen the rarest film as many times,” says Vidhu Vinod Chopra in the film,which is replete with interviews with a host of actors,cinematographers and filmmakers.

“Once I started archiving,I enjoyed it so much that the process became an integral part of who I was. I did not want to be a filmmaker anymore. Also,I enjoyed being around students,” said Nair.

It is because of his efforts that India still has nine silent films from the 1,700 made in India,with Dadasaheb Phalke’s Raja Harishchandra still finding a place in the NFAI vaults. But when Dungarpur visited the archives before he shot the film,he saw rusting cans and Nair’s office turned into a junkyard. One of the main hurdles Dungarpur faced with the film was to get NFAI’s permission to shoot some portions with Nair inside the vaults. “It was an ego problem for one particular director of NFAI,” said Nair,who believes that the attitude of people towards restoration and archiving is changing. However,Nair thinks that the film is too long and could have used better extracts from various films.