Acetate shield to protect trove of celluloid history

Often, the quality of paper received at the archives is quite bad, more so because these were the posters that were sometimes stuck on walls, and whipped off to bring to the archives. While all posters have been converted into transparencies, to preserve them for posterity and the reference of future film enthusiastic generations, it is the original poster, often hand-drawn sketches or painting done with colours on paper, that is facing the possibility of destruction due to time and age. Frequent handling is not allowed at the archives for fear of breaking the paper which has gone brittle with age and endangering its life and all references are made by scanning the transparencies.

There is very little that has survived from early Indian cinema, out of 1200 silent films made in the country the NFAI could get hold of only about 10 titles. Posters, the earliest means of film publicity, often carried from village to village in bullock carts and displayed at social spots, have been collected and contain many classics. These include New Theatres Devdas, which shows the dark profile of a woman before a burning pyre, Chandra Mohan and Naseem Banu in romantic profile in Kamal Amrohi’s Pukar which spoke of Jehangir’s love for Nurjahan, Bimal Roy’s Do Bigha Zamin and Guru Dutt’s Aar-Paar.

Documentation Assistant Arti Karkhanis has recently returned from a course conducted by the National Archives Delhi in hand lamination and as soon as resources are put in place and a laboratory set up for necessary workforce, the plan is to start work on this unique lamination technique.

Hand lamination involves covering the paper poster with an acetate foil which will preserve the document giving it a backing and keeping it safe from dust, light and temperature changes. Unlike commercial lamination, where the original document gets stuck to the plastic foil, in hand lamination, an acetone solution can be used to dissolve the cellulose acetate foil to get back the original piece.

While work is to start with wall posters, song booklets and brochures will be next to follow. Considering that not more than five posters can be laminated in a day per person by this manual procedure, this is expected to take some time.