Partition’s ‘silent victims’: 1,200 classic films

Among the missing speechless black and white cinematic signposts: Dhiren Ganguly’s England Return and Excuse Me Sir. ‘‘We are waiting for relations to improve, and we hope that our films will be back with us,’’ said NFAI director L K Upadhyaya.

The NFAI did manage to persuade one Pakistani collector to part with Sangdil (1952), starring Dilip Kumar and Madhubala. And the route was circuitous: the film was spotted in London and had to be retrieved by the Indian High Commission.

Some of the films disappeared in the post-Partition haze, others took less traumatic journeys to other places on the map. Films made during the talkies era fared no better: the print of P C Barua’s Devdas that was screened at the International Film Festival of India in New Delhi was procured from the Bangladesh government.

Barua’s second film Zindagi, in which K L Saigal warbled the immortal So Ja Rajkumari, is also missing. The NFAI has only three of singer-actress Noorjehan’s films: Dupatta, Gulnar and Intezaar. NFAI watchers said the organisation was set up only in 1964—by which time several of the films had long been lost.

The NFAI’s deputy director, Shashidharan, also pointed out that the Censor Board of Film Certification certifies nearly 1,000 films every year and it’s not possible to store all of them in the archives. ‘‘But we’re making efforts get our silent era films back,’’ he told The Indian Express.

‘‘Films can turn up anywhere,’’ observed former NFAI director P K Nair. ‘‘I located a silent film from 1928 in Thailand. Several films have been tracked in South Africa and Algeria where they were languishing because the authorities weren’t able to identify the titles. It’s for respective governments to take up the cause of cinema,’’ added Nair, who has compiled a list of more than 100 films that need to be brought back home.