Original subtitles

I was traveling to Prague to meet with Jiri Menzel.

For me, the trip was full of memories.

I remember the first time I sawTrains Strictly Surveillance, as a student.

And, after the film, leaving the cinema and talking about it with my friends...

AFTER ONE YEAR AND 11 VISITS, I GOT PERMISSION TO FILM

WITH NAIR SAAB ON FILE. ULTIMATELY, HE WOULD RETURN HOME.

...Santosh and Prabhu until early morning.

Advertise your product or brand here Contact www.SubtitleDB.org

Mr. Nair is, for me, a symbol of cinema memory.

There was an expression that said that cinema has the life of a butterfly...

DIRECTOR

...a very short life.

The beautiful butterfly flies and disappears.

And only some people, like him,

managed to preserve the butterfly

and keep the butterfly available for future generations.

I think he's the guardian Indian cinema.

He is not just a mere archivist.

He was also a historian,

because if you don't have an archivist, we don't have a history of cinema.

DIRECTOR

And if cinema is not saved and if you destroy it like here,

because the memory of cinema has disappeared,

the cinema must be seen as an art form.

At night, with exhibitions in the Main Room, we used to eat quickly

and we waited outside by the arrival of P. K. Nair.

DIRECTOR

And then there was a frenzy:

"Oh, Nair Sahib is coming."

It was as if the God of cinema had arrived!

Light of Asia,reel number eight.

Kaliya Mardan, reel number six.

Shiraz,reel number seven.

The Blue Angel,reel number seven.

Our Daily Bread, last reel.

Queen Cristina, reel number three.

Sant Tukaram, reel number four.

Barua, Devdas, reels number three and six.

Hunterwali, reels number nine and ten.

Cinema began as a marvel and a magic.

That's how I felt in my childhood.

Then it became an obsession...

... and, finally, in a passion.

But now, looking back,

Cinema is a big part of me...

... and my life.

I understood much better the world and people...

...along my long journey with cinema.

The way I look for cinema is the form...

because I understand much better people and the world,

and expanded my view of life.

I see cinema as part of life.

My guru, Henri Langlois, my mentor, he told me once:

"You have to watch the movies... Treat them as if they were your children.

You have to love them."

And that's the feeling what one should have for these films.

He gave these films a human face.

I am often asked when my love for films began.

Sometimes I don't know. It existed even before I opened my eyes.

And when I opened them, it was the first day at the Institute.

Trip to Tokyo, to the Gates of Hell, Meghe Dhaka Tara,

Andrei Rublev surprised me.

We saw each other in those films.

It inspired us to become next Tarkovsky,

Fellini or Ray.

I wanted to meet the man which had made it possible

our understanding of cinema.

This is the room where I worked.

You know...

It's a very exciting place for me, because...

...more than 20 years, the second and third decades of the Archive,

everything was done in this place, film collection.

Get in touch with people in the cinema, both in India and abroad,

and also, many connoisseurs from the cinema came to talk to me,

and everyone sat in this room.

There was a glass shelf full of books,

my favorite books and festival brochures.

I kept them here.

And when I was tired,

used to look out the window to the beautiful trees outside.

This was one of my favorite places, where he spent most of his life,

to build the Archive.

I would like to know what happened to him.

The way you keep it...

Let's start with a man like Godard,

or Ozu, Fellini, Ray, Ghatak...

DIRECTOR

...Tarkovsky, Bresson... The list is endless. Ozu.

The list is endless, of participations and movie views.

But the most important thing is to understand that comes from another world,

that comes from another world,

and suddenly came in in the world of cinema,

and suddenly you see...

...the way other people they see the world we live in.

And when you're young, you get hooked. We are on a trip.

SHREE PADMANABHA CINEMA

I was interested in collecting things,

even when watching movies in my school days.

Maybe I had some archivist inside me,

because I didn't throw anything away, including...

My family didn't like it very much.

At the cinema, we gave tickets,

then they gave us half the ticket.

I used to keep the tickets, and...

I don't know why,

I didn't like to throw it away things related to cinema.

But the only person who really I understood my involvement with cinema

it was my younger brother Ramakutty.

And he also helped me put things away,

even though I never asked.

WATSON HOTEL, BOMBAY

CINEMATOGRAPHY THE WONDER OF THE CENTURY

ADMISSION: ONE RUPEE PREMIERE CINEMA

THERE WILL BE EXHIBITIONS TONIGHT AT THE WATSON HOTEL.

Dhundiraj Govind Phalke, popularly known as Dadasaheb Phalke,

� often referenced as the father of the Indian film industry.

Actually, he did the first one Indian film, Raja Harischandra.

PHENOMENAL SUCCESS

Therefore, when we started the Archive in 1964,

our top priority it was looking for material,

Dadasaheb Phalke footage.

This is Nashik.

When I arrived in 1969, in a transport of newspapers,

to come and look for films by Dadasaheb Phalke,

from his son Prabhakar Phalke.

I came late, almost midnight, from Pune.

I think it was one in the morning or something like that and I got here first thing in the morning.

He carried the daily newspaper, the Kesari.

The first edition published...

They wanted you to arrive early in the morning.

It was the normal newspaper route. I was asked let me take care of the transportation...

... because when is it time to return, it comes back almost empty,

so that I could carry the nitrate rolls with me.

In our cinema history, encyclopedia of cinema...

SCREENWRITER / DIRECTOR

...or cinema archive which he created in Pune,

his name should be Dada Phalke.

Dada Phalke was the pioneer,

but Dada Phalke was collected by him and it went down in history.

This is where I came, in 1969,

where home used to be by Dadasaheb Phalke.

I remember that Prabhakar Phalke, your youngest son invited me,

because he said he had old Phalke movies at home.

That's why I came from Pune

and I was impressed When I saw the door, it was wooden,

and at the top was an insignia recorded from a camcorder,

very similar to that.

It was noticeable that it was almost a sanctified space,

and he said he had a box wooden with things,

Phalke stuff. I opened it,

and I saw that a large part was there from the film Kaliya Mardan,

and that's how we got it

Phalke's only full-length film to the Archive, until this moment.

KALIYA-MARDAN BY MR. D. G. PHALKE THE PIONEER OF EAST CINEMA.

MANDAKINI PHALKE, DAUGHTER OF THE FATHER OF INDIAN CINEMA,

IN THE ROLE OF SHREE KRISHNA.

I wish they would have kept it as a museum.

Either way, there will be something good to remember in the future.

Now everything is gone.

That's what happens when the world changes.

We are in a historic location.

This is the place where the first Indian film,

Raja Harishchandra,was spun.

Yes.

I think there have been changes, right?

Yes, many changes have been made.

Thank God that the original structure still exists.

GRANDSON OF D. G. PHALKE

- I remember we met in 69... - Yes.

Yes, it was at the end of 69, beginning of 71, 70...

- My mother was with me... - So.

...and she wanted to show my... He had just gotten married,

and she wanted to show movies from Dadasaheb Phalke to my in-laws,

and you, sincerely and graciously, he accepted.

No, I really wanted to show him the film,

because we had received a film of Prabhakar a year before

and it was all in pieces.

It took a lot of work to put it together,

in the order in which Dadasaheb had done so originally.

STUDY OF FACIAL EXPRESSIONS BY A GIRL OF SEVEN.

I wanted to show it to Mandakiniji so he could tell us the order...

I waited until night, I took the same transport back

and said to them: "This is very precious material

and see, please they drive very slowly."

I left there again around midnight

and I got here early in the morning,

to the shacks, where we had a file cabinet,

in '67 or something like that.

So I took out the coils one by one

and I saw that they were just parts,

but from the same film, Kaliya Mardan.

Since we didn't know the order of the film,

the box somehow contained a notebook,

a handwritten note by Phalke

with the order the coils were in,

such as the content of each of the coils.

This helped a lot to put the pieces together.

in the order in which, perhaps, Phalke had them...

There were damaged scenes. We couldn't...

At the time, there was no digital restoration.

I hope they can do it now.

But neverthelessKaliya Mardan it became a full film.

It was a six-reel film, almost a feature film.

During the silent film period, between 1912 and 1931,

more were done of 1200 films in this country.

But much of it was gone.

They simply don't exist.

With the exception of ten or 12 films

that we can save or preserve in the Archive.

And even these are incomplete.

MAHAVIR PHOTOPLAYS PRESENTS

Any film made, say, 80 years ago, 50 years ago...

"Welcome, professor. When will you find a rich fool

for my beautiful girl to reward him?”

... has something to give, something we have already lost.

AUTHOR

And P. K. Nair, I believe, knew the importance of preserving,

It's not just the films, but the memories.

My first encounter with cinema It was in the early 40s,

when I was seven or eight years old.

I still remember it fondly

of my first association to the cinema, sitting on the floor.

It wasn't made of cement, It was white sand on the beach...

SHREE PADMANABHA CINEMA

... and watching a Tamil movie directed by K. Subrahmanyam, I believe.

It was a magical experience for me, at the time.

From the first time I saw him, I was fascinated by cinema.

Every day, at night...

My family was opposed to this, especially my father.

He was against cinema.

I thought cinema were just bad things.

Somehow left home, At night, after everyone has gone to sleep

and I hurried... in fact, I ran to the nearest cinema,

to ten, 15 minutes.

And when I got there, the film was almost halfway done.

So, I started watching first the second part of the film.

And then, to get the beginning, I went to the mornings,

because it was the only possibility what I had to see,

and it could only be on Saturday or Sunday.

The first Hollywood film The one I saw was a Western, Vigilantes Return.

I don't even know the title!

- It's a Universal film. - Then.

It's a Western Technicolor, from the early 40s...

- Was it in Chennai, or... - No, in Trivandrum.

- Trivandrum. Right. - Right.

And another movie was Inconquerableby DeMille.

Gary Cooper and Paulette Goddard...

- Yes, this one arrived in New Empire... - Yes.

It's a film I still remember. It was the first DeMille film I saw,

because this particular cinema it mainly showed Paramount films.

Then, The Gypsy Witch, Marlene Dietrich...

In black and white, beautiful photography... I still remember that...

And then, of course, Ray Milland's...

- How old were you? - ... Human Fragment.

How old were you at the time?

- Maybe eight or ten... - Eight or ten?

- Eight or ten years. - Amazing!

I remember, at the time, that there was a tent with a projection here

and a cabin on that side,

and that half of the cinema it was full of sand...

...something called an earthly ticket.

Beautiful white sand on the beach Shankumugham in Trivandrum.

The white sand in Kerala it had a royal appearance.

It's very bright

and is used for special occasions, weddings

and celebrations.

So we never felt like...

... we had the cheapest ticket,

because of the fact of me sitting on the sand,

and so, the beautiful sand associated with the celebration

it was a wonder, along with the images on the screen.

There used to be just two sessions, at the time, at 6:30 pm and 9:30 pm.

And in each cinema, at 6 pm, there was a speaker outside

playing popular songs

perhaps to attract an audience to buy tickets.

They used to start with a song of devotion.

"Gnanapazham", I believe, by K. B. Sundarambal,

in honor of God Muruga.

And then later, many Hindi songs followed

by Kemchand Prakash and Naushad.

And later, in this particular cinema,

I used to come after the beginning of the film and stood outside,

because, at the time, the projector was there and the screen was on this side.

They were always changing.

When I started watching movies, the screen was here and the projection there.

Then sometime in '44 or '45, I remember

distinctly from the film, Kismet, by Bombay Talkies.

Used to stay abroad and listened to the songs from the projector.

If you don't have much of an audience,

feel like touching the sand and then watch movies.

It was a kind of wonder,

the type of stories what I started getting involved in at the beginning.

Most of it from Tamil mythology or legends.

Having all of this filmed is beautiful because,

let's say, 100 years from now,

can be seen

a certain aspect of life...

DIRECTOR

... which only existed at that time.

It means a lot.

It means more than the Greek tragedy,

where everything is magnified without comparison.

But these things are so small

manifest themselves beautifully.

It is the soul of art.

My view of cinema has changed, basically, with two films

which I saw in the early 50s.

One wasBicycle Thieves de Sica and the other was

The Gates of Hell by Kurosawa.

These two films had a tremendous impact on me,

because, until that point, the type of cinema I was exposed to

it was the school narrative, the best from Hollywood and even Indian films.

It was a form of cinema treatment which was totally different.

And did you know that cinema doesn't count just stories, but it goes beyond that.

BICYCLE THIEVES

Then my interest and involvement in cinema it became deeper

and I wanted to learn how to perform

and I didn't want to continue studying.

My father thought that I should do engineering.

I was determined to learn achievement.

I had been exposed to Hollywood

and Hindi films before coming to the Institute.

ACTOR

I had sneaked out to see The Silence

at the Max Mueller Bhavan in Delhi,

mainly because there were scenes of naked women,

not because it's a great film.

And we were shown the Gates from Hellat drama school,

with particular attention to Mr. Mifune's performance,

because I was interpreting a similar character in a play.

But my knowledge of world cinema was zero,

when I came to the Institute.

I had been very influenced by actors with very good speech,

actors with a very good posture,

that filled a screen or a stage,

actors like Mr. Olivier and the British masters.

And some British actors too.

But I had no idea there were so many Great actors in other parts of the world.

And one of the first movies I watched at the Institute it was Bicycle Thieves

and I couldn't believe my eyes.

It was a complete enigma to me

how the director got authentic people to play authentic roles,

because, as everyone knows,

It's not easy to interpret us ourselves in front of the camera.

The moment a camera It's pointed in our direction...

... the grandfather takes off his glasses, the uncle shrinks his belly

and all women They try to look as beautiful as possible.

Therefore, people are still afraid

because they feel very vulnerable It's in front of the camera.

So, Mr. De Sica's achievement was...

... something unmatched to this day.

And it was thanks to Nair Sahib's insistence

that was shown to us the Bicycle Thieves.

Otherwise, the acting course I wouldn't think it would be important for us

watch films like Bicycle Thieves

or Hiroshima, My Love, or other films of the genre.

I was fascinated by some directors, mainly, Mehboob Khan and...

... Bimal Roy, Raj Kapoor and Guru Dutt.

I thought I should address it one of these directors

and try to work with them as an assistant or apprentice.

MEHBOOB STUDIO

So, with that intention, I came to Bombay in 1955

and I went to Mehboob Studio find Mehboob Khan Sahib

and, at that time, he was filmingMother India.

He said: "I won't pay you anything but, if you want, you can watch."

Because he already had six or seven assistants.

Used to catch the technical details of the realization,

the character summaries, continuity sheets, things like that.

I spoke to the camera assistants, not with camera operators.

Faredoon Irani was unreachable...

The camera assistant he was a Keralite, a Malayalam.

That's why I had long conversations with him.

We were almost at the brink of planning the making of a film.

We had written a story...

But, in a way, through this process I realized

that this wasn't for me.

Because there was a concept of what a good film should be

and the way films were being designed and planned.

Somewhere along the way, I realised, because of the way we planned

make the film... I said:

"I have the feeling that I don't fit into this."

The turning point was getting together with Jean Bhownagary, in Mumbai.

He advised me to sign up to a position at the Cinema Institute.

I applied, I was selected and I came to Pune in March 1961.

The place looks the same to what it was 50 years ago,

with the exception that there was more wooden walkways,

and also some of the equipment.

This crane... It's the grandeur of the old equipment...

PRABHAT STADIUM

...it's so robust which can still be used today.

And I remember there was a tank,

somewhere here. We can open the wooden platform

and, inside, there is a tap. We can fill it with water.

I remember that, in a film like Amrit Manthan,

they filled a tank with water. As if it were a garden with water.

Nalini Tarkhad was there, I believe.

There were few stadiums, in Bombay, they had this thing.

I was told there was even a zoo with animals and also a jungle.

This was all modeled according to the best of Hollywood,

thanks to the great pioneers Damle and Fatehal.

This place is exactly the same to what it was 50 years ago,

when I entered this sanctified space.

The space where some of the greatest Indian films have been made.

A place where the brave like Shantaram, Damle, Fatelal, Jagirdar,

Vishram Bedekar started in realization.

I was so excited to come in

and for starting my long career at the Cinema Institute.

These rooms were the initial rooms makeup artist at Prabhat Studio.

The studio, the rooms, were Shanta Apte's favorites,

Nalini Tarkhad, Durgabai Khote and Prabhat's big stars.

One of these rooms was the room of Madhubala's favorite makeup,

when I was working in a Prabhat film called Apradhi.

I remember it was in that building where were the makeup rooms...

And the top floor of the building It was also used for sound recording.

DIRECTOR

There was a sound stage there.

I remember Professor Thakkar used to sit there.

That location became the Archive for some time.

This is the room where we start the Archive in 1964.

It was a small room where three of us,

I, as Assistant Curator, a laboratory assistant and another

film reviewer, We started the initial work.

My first priority was to look for the first Indian films,

since the time of silent films.

When I was a child, I used to spend it with my father, then a director...

PRODUCER / DIRECTOR

... by a place called Famous Tardeo.

It is said that there used to be there a stadium that, unfortunately,

suffered an unfortunate accident,

in which nitrate films, which were preserved there, caught fire.

And the place was reduced to ashes, this half of the burned house was still there.

Something that always confused me as a child he was

How are those images so tempting,

so fascinating, Could they be the source of such destruction?

The safes were on the other side...

... where we kept the films, but now I think they are no longer there.

I was told they were destroyed in a fire in early 2000.

They used to store material in nitrate here, what I never...

In my time, I have never stored nitrate in this area.

There was a rare fire due to the nitrate that was stored here,

who destroyed a space where,

not only was the Archive, but also Prabhat's classics.

The original negatives, image, sound, nitrate negatives, everything is gone.

MINISTRY BEGINS INVESTIGATION TO THE FIRE AT THE INSTITUTE

CRUCIAL PART OF HERITAGE FROM CINEMA IS GONE

In fact, it lasted from 1933 until 2000.

As I remember, the director at the time he even said:

CINEMA CRITIC

"What difference does it make? We have copies, positives."

Which is ridiculous to say,

because if you lost the originals nitrate of some of the classics,

what to do now?

Archive should have the respect it deserves,

which, unfortunately, It is not part of the political will...

ACTRESS

... I don't think there's even an agreement.

I remember that, when there was a fire in the Archive,

I was a member of Parliament,

and that I had said with tears in your eyes

and that had no effect,

as if it had no political importance.

The door was very heavy, almost like a bank vault,

which requires two people to open it. I couldn't do it alone.

And there was an intermediate camera.

When you entered, It used to be very, very cold.

So I was really surprised. How did it happen?

Then, when we wanted install air conditioning,

someone had to blow up walls,

and we discovered, very strangely,

that there were many stones falling from the ceiling.

There were two walls with a parting in the middle

filled with pebbles to the top.

At the top, there was a meter of water, permanently stored.

I really need to value it the ingenuity of our ancestors.

They didn't have air conditioning,

but they managed to keep the place cool.

Now, I know that the Institute became an academy.

I wish it had been kept as it was before,

to have a memory of the inheritance of this fantastic place.

PRABHAT STADIUM

This is the fantastic Prabhat Studio,

which produced some of the best Indian films from the 30s and 40s.

Now this is the home of the Institute of Film and Television of India.

Even in the early days, It was almost like a training camp

for future directors,

and then when the government got it and built the Cinema Institute,

In fact, the old tradition to use it as a training ground

for future filmmakers continued.

When I joined the Institute, I had never left a film halfway.

At the Institute, seeing so many, and not having to pay to see them,

a person got the habit of leaving in the middle of those who were not interested.

Whenever I did this, however,

and there were times when there were two people in the auditorium,

or perhaps none except Nair Sahib,

who was always sitting there and I used to think:

"What a beautiful job this man has! I would give anything to have his job.

Watch movies all day."

Until you realized the amount of work that was needed,

the tension I felt

and how psychologically tiring Watch so many movies in one day

and try to assimilate them all.

And archive them all, place them

in the Archive, classify them, write down all credit details.

The amount of work is incredible that Nair Sahib had behind the scenes.

The work that no one saw.

And unfortunately, the work that few are aware of.

Maybe I shouldn't have slept with Charlie when I met him.

A little light and a man with a pen taking notes.

It was Mr. Nair, meticulously taking notes,

checking lyrics, checking problems alignment, any problems,

There he was, Silently taking notes.

And then we realized something very simple.

If it hadn't been for that man, we wouldn't be seeing this work.

While the film was being shown, He took notes, lots of notes.

DIRECTOR

We've all tried that.

We also said: "It's a good method, why don't we do it?"

In the classrooms we started to do this.

While showing the film, we simply wrote.

We took a small flashlight and we took notes like Nair.

Some of us went into his room

to see what was in the notebook.

DIRECTOR

And in the notebook, there were meticulous notes

about the condition of the roller,

at which minute the film deteriorated.

It was this passion, an obsessive passion about cinema,

which was a mobilizing force.

One day I went to his house,

I went to Nair Sahib's house around 22:00 for dinner.

DOCUMENTARIST

We were sitting talking, and I noticed

in a bunch of books, articles. There were 200-page notebooks next to him.

And I asked him, "What is that?"

And he said, "I used to have a diary of the films I saw."

I asked, "Since when?" And he: "Since the days in Trivandrum."

So, I picked up some of them, leafed through them

and I was amazed with the meticulous way through which

every film he saw was recorded.

Like the display date, the cinema you saw it in, the time.

The Man Who Knew Too Much, the second version of Alfred Hitchcock.

The Man in the Gray Suit,

I also remember seeing it in New Empire.

I asked him: "Let me have just two books,

never ask me to return them. I will keep them as a souvenir."

And I've kept them with me for 33 years

and they are still very special to me.

At first, also if there was any fear of him,

because we were behind him without seeing that we were late...

PHOTOGRAPHY DIRECTOR / DIRECTOR

...and sometimes he turned on the flashlight

and caught us talking. Something like that.

He made us realize that cinema It wasn't a place where people talked.

It was a place where people could enjoy of experience,

there are films that can be a group experience,

like Dev Anand's songs,

where people sing,

and there are films that can be a very personal experience.

Therefore, we must respect silence. And all these things.

That was something we learned. without being taught.

MEHBOOB PRODUCTIONS

MEHBOOB PRODUCTIONS PRESENT

HIGH HIGHER AND EVEN HIGHER

KARDAR PRODUCTIONS PRESENT

FOUNDER HIMANSU RAI

ARDESHIR M. IRANI PRESENTS

SHREE RANJIT MOVIETONE CO. PRESENTS

DALSUKH M. PANCHOLI PRESENTS

AVM PRODUCTIONS

What happened in this country was that, even though we are making films

from the turn of the century, the 20th century,

no one thought that cinema or that films made in this country...

NEW THEATERS LTD PRESENTS

... were part of it our cultural heritage.

They treated cinema as a convenience...

ART EDITOR

DIRECTOR

... or a means of entertainment for the so-called illiterate masses.

If you don't consider the films as part of historical culture,

so a large part is being eliminated.

Of course, how do you study tastes? of the public in the 20s and 30s?

The spirit of the archive has always been

that of giving all expressions

the kind of respect they deserve.

You never know which particular type of form of expression

can currently be seen like nonsense,

but that tomorrow can be transformed

in the greatest form of literature.

We are such a cinema-conscious country.

Much of our people, our ideals, of our attitude towards life,

in interpersonal relationships, all of this can be identified in the films

that we saw during childhood.

He really thinks that everything should be preserved for the future,

because we don't know, 20 years from now, 60 years from now...

DOCUMENTARIST

... two centuries ago,

what will be considered historically important.

And this aspect made him, in a strange, very altruistic way,

because he was very selfish and it was very

involved in the acquisition of things for the Archive,

but selfless, not putting your value judgment

in what he acquired.

From an Archive point of view, a Satyajit Ray film is so important

like an early stunt movie with John Cawas or Nadia.

We say that these films they are grade C films.

There are categories A, B and C.

At one point it could be class C but 50 years later it will be a classic.

You cannot select a movie based on its contemporary value.

You need to see it from a historical perspective.

In France, Langlois never thought of...

...just keep the good movies.

He said: "The good films come first, of course,

they have to be preserved,

but all films deserve to live, not die."

You know, here, in Sri Lanka, we are very good at destroying them...

...to the movies. They are made, shown, and everything is over.

I don't say that all films must be kept,

but there are films in which a panel of a certain country must decide

about their respective historical importance,

commercial importance, artistic importance.

All of this matters with regard to the preservation of cinema.

Otherwise, the story does not exist, there is no memory of cinema,

of national cinema and everything disappears.

And when it disappears, people forget the great achievers,

the great actors, the great actresses,

and this whole chapter of cinema history is lost.

It was more of an oral tradition.

We didn't believe in preserving things, to write about them,

to keep them.

It started from storytellers, it depended on memory.

The master spoke, the student absorbed what the master said,

and in turn, he ended up passing it off.

And I think there was little emphasis on keeping

what was considered sacred or that it should be maintained...

...for eternity.

When I provided assistance to Gulzar Sahib,

he told me a story from when he was Bimal Roy's assistant,

in Kabuliwala.

Wazir Mohammad Khan, who played in this film,

used to talk about having sung the first song

ever sung in the history of Indian cinema.

"De de khuda ke naam", in the filmAlam Ara.

Unfortunately, nothing remains of this song, except the story.

That's where I came in the 60s,

I think in 66 or 67,

mainly to meet Ardeshir Irani, the father of talkies.

I wanted to meet him in person to see if we could...

...get some reels ofAlam Ara, the first Indian talkie film.

Right from the beginning, when the Archive began,

one of the films we were looking forward to

for getting it wasAlam Ara.

I walked in and saw him sitting...

... in front of a large table, with his son Sapurji.

I told him about the Archive and what we were trying to do and...

...in our genuine interest in preserving Alam Ara.

He said: "There must be some coils somewhere here,

but not the whole movie."

Of course, he offered a lot of negatives from Imperial Films,

and all material that they had in the studio,

He asked his son to give it to us.

When we were going down the stairs,

Sapurji was also with me. He himself confessed:

"I got rid of three coils, the ones my father talks about,

after having extracted silver from them."

It was a kind of confession of the son of a great pioneer.

A 16mm roll sells for 4000 to 5000 rupees.

If it is a small roll, it is sold for 200, 300 rupees.

The 35 mm is sold by kilos. It is 100 rupees per kilogram.

When I was a child, my summer I spent watching movies at my grandmother's house.

She used to book a cinema audience

and we sat in the audience.

I sat behind her, and we watched film after film.

I still remember of the color moments ofPakeezah.

Meena Kumari's interpretation from "Inhi logon ne".

And after Calcutta,

my grandfather often brought it 16mm black and white rolls of...

Devdas, Do Bigha Zameen, Bandini and some Raj Kapoor films.

I remember singing the songs fromShree 420.

"Ramaiya Vasta Vaiya".

And here I am now. Surrounded by reels and films.

The images I grew up with, fading and turning to silver,

or colorful bracelets.

Many of the producers they never wanted to preserve their films,

even when they had a lot of money.

They had made a lot of money. But as soon as that period was over,

were never interested in preserving the negatives,

or in making interpositives and all that.

They didn't even do that.

They thought the life of the thing...

They thought they had enough returns from this

and that the life of the film was over. But suddenly, when television came along,

started showing films on television

and they started getting revenue from it.

Then they started looking for his films,

but they did not exist.

Many people discovered that there was no trace of the film.

A film like Sholay, for example, is still alive today.

PRODUCER / DIRECTOR

Can be displayed and money It is collected every year.

It's difficult to separate ourselves from...

The main thing has to be that, otherwise

Why do people wouldn't they want their work preserved?

It was government law. A film that wins a national award

must be sent to the Archive.

PRODUCER / DIRECTOR

So we send them.

The award-winning films were sent.

But I didn't send all my films and maybe that was my fault.

We make material non-degradable plastic,

but unfortunately, we transform our art...

ACTOR / DIRECTOR

... especially cinema, in biodegradable material.

Our directors they never treated what they do

as a historical consequence and as part of the country's heritage.

You know, as an archivist, I refuse to believe

that Alam Ara is permanently lost.

100% TALKING FILM

Upon its launch, Master Vithal was very popular.

Master Vithal was the hero of the film, Jillo Bai played the mother,

Moti was an actress at the time. She played the femme fatale.

Prithviraj participated.

ACTRESS

The film was released.

In the past, when movies were released,

a lot of people went to see them,

there was a crowd!

The whole of Calcutta was filled with people!

100% TALKING FILM

It was like: "The hero speaks, she also speaks. How could this be?

We usually go to watch silent films

in which, whatever the scene, fight or otherwise, a caption would appear.

Like, if he said: "Why did you come here? Go away!”

Then a caption would appear saying: "Get away from me!"

And the public read it.

The room was filled with murmurs.

When we realized it was spoken, no one could believe it!

Everyone went to see him, women and children...

To actually see where the sound was coming from.

WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT TALKING FILMS?

In the 60s, early 70s, wandered through the old stadiums,

� searches for recordings anywhere corner of the stadium or in its warehouses

and sometimes outside Mumbai.

Small places like Bhusawal, Amarawati, or Kakinada and Beswada.

Places like that, you understand?

I had found out from Dilip Sahib which he had not seenMughal-e-Azam.

So I asked people. Said: "Please!

You have the reels that show to the students of Dilip Sahib's films.

ACTORS

He hasn't seen Mughal-e-Azam yet! So show it to us now."

And it didn't really happen.

In a few hours, everything was prepared

and for the first time in his life, he saw Mughal-e-Azamin this auditorium, with me!

Hardly one or two people with me, in our entourage.

But believe me, the film was being displayed in front of me

and Dilip Sahib was sitting next to me.

Who could see the film? I only looked at Dilip Sahib!

We managed to get it some films from these studios,

those that had closed.

WHAT LEFT OF THE BOMBAY TALKIES STADIUM

Just like Modern Theaters, Salem by the great T.R. Sundaram

and Lahore's Pancholi Stadiums.

Despite Bombay Talkies have gone into liquidation,

somehow, I managed to obtain Achhut Kanya, Bandhan, Kangan, Jhula

and alsoKismet, which had the longest duration.

And then the New Theaters classics, thanks to Mr. B. N. Sircar,

Chandidas, Devdas, President, Vidyapati, Mukti

and even the first film directed by Bimal Roy.

I didn't come to be an obstacle, to get in your way.

- But, you... - Yes, me.

Today, I left everything my wealth behind

and I came to do social service, like you.

"Did you come"? I'd say you got ahead of the curve.

You did not leave your wealth behind. But there is wealth before you.

The people you came for,

you will find true wealth in them.

I remember when Ashok Kumar came to the Institute

to enroll daughter Priti Ganguly, in interpretation.

He asked: "Do you have Achhut Kanyain the Archive?"

And I: "I have Achhut Kanya, and also his first film, Jeevan Naiya,

which was your first with Bombay Talkies."

He was very excited, He was almost shocked.

First, he said to me: "No, Achhut Kanyais also lost."

And I'm like, "Don't worry about it, is very safe in the Archive

and we have a new version."

One of my versions black and white favorites.

He personally

collected several films all over the city...

DIRECTOR

... from antique shops, from various other sources

and built the Archive, brick by brick.

It's really extraordinary, the amount of work Nair had to do.

The only equivalent person what can I think of

It's that great man who started the Cinematheque in Paris.

My goal was to show shadows

of the living to coexist with shadows of the dead,

because that is the essence of films.

GHOST OF THE CINEMATHECA

It supplants time and space.

Go beyond the fourth dimension.

Someone took me to the evening session

at the Cinematheque.

They have a movie theater in the basement of the Museum of Man.

A friend of mine took me there,

and I saw Langlois sitting on a bench,

in the foyer.

COURCELLES: HEADQUARTERS OF THE CINEMATHECA

I met him and he asked me that was the screening session.

The next day, I went to his office. It was an old and historic building

and I climbed the wooden stairs, he was on the first floor.

The floor was made of wood too.

My film Bhuvan Shome It was shown in 1969, in Venice...

DIRECTOR

... and, that night, a lot of people were there,

It's my back

and I had to talk about the film.

And then, MadameKawakita,

which is very important in Japanese cinema

and responsible for

bring Kurosawa to world cinema,

She asked me which hotel I was in...

... and the phone number.

It's there. Yes.

Who speaks?

Listen if you want to talk with Mr. Henri Langlois, please call again

At nine. I think he'll be here.

Good morning, sir.

The next morning, I was woken up by a phone call.

I was in my hotel room.

The person on the phone said: "Am I talking to Mrinal Sen?"

And I said, "Yes, that's me."

"I'm the Langlois of Paris."

Immediately, I felt like the phone was going to fall out of my hand,

and almost fell!

And I said, "Are you Mr. Langlois?

Am I speaking to Mr. Langlois?” "Yes, you're talking to me.

So, when are you coming to Paris?"

And I: "No, I have no plans to go to Paris.

From Venice I will go to Rome,

from Rome, I will take a flight to Calcutta, to India,

to Delhi and then to Calcutta."

And he said: "No, you have to come to Paris first.

Change your plans,

you have to come to Paris. And then, when you come to Paris,

come with your film."

He asked me: "How many films are there in the Archive?"

I happened to have a copy from my catalog, at the time,

copied.

And he leafed through the catalogue,

He took the pen and marked some titles.

I looked, It took about five to ten minutes.

He read every page and marked some of the titles and...

... I just looked.

Finally he said, "Very well,

you are more than 40, 50 films from the pre-1950 period.

Do you understand?”

And he said: "Great, you did a good job."

So he was scoring films before 1950.

So, I deduced,

he confirmed my concept that the true strength of an archive

It's not in the number of films existing from the previous year,

but the number of films from the beginning of cinema,

films that are at least 50 years old.

Langlois was an artist

and he was a very large and opulent man,

who said what he had to say,

to the government or the minister or anyone else.

He was a dictator.

He got into a lot of trouble with several governments,

but ultimately, he won.

Mr. Nair, on the other hand, it was more discreet

and as good an archivist as Langlois.

But he worked discreetly and worked...

... with a single objective.

And that objective was to preserve the heritage of Indian cinema.

People like that don't come easily.

And later when he said this:

“I have the film Bhuvan Shome. He will be with me."

And then I got a phone call of a Marie... What was her name?

A British lady?

-Marie Seton. -Marie Seton.

Marie Seton called me:

"Mrinal, how did you give it to Langlois?

You know he will make a pirated copy from the film?"

And I said, "Look how lucky I am,

what Langlois did a pirated copy of my film."

Is it true that you stole films and went to the laboratory

to make copies of these films?

- I didn't understand... - Did you steal movies?

I believe that, when a film arrived to be shown

or when it arrived for a film festival,

you used to make a copy of the film.

That's not a good word for an archivist.

It's true that...

...we get movies from foreign archives...

...and...

...with a kind of deal, It's almost a personal agreement in which...

...we really want a movie. Because I remember

from The Hour of the Furnaces, the Argentine film by Fernando Solanas.

He came to the festival and borrowed it for an exhibition,

to show it to the students.

Normally you cannot send movies out without permission.

Somehow, I got it because it needed to be displayed,

because it's a great film.

I got him to come here and made a copy.

It's true. And I returned it a day or two later.

Officially, it was just for show.

But we don't...

... we record that we did so.

I think a true archivist...

... must have immunity to...

... overcome these legal problems.

A story we always hear about,

when a movie arrived to the Institute for exhibition...

DIRECTOR

... from anywhere in the world,

That's what he got in this film, who took him to the laboratory

and which said, "Make a copy of this."

And that overnight, a copy was made and the film went away,

for him to at least have a copy in the Archive.

I don't know if it's true, but

are the stories we heard in relation to him.

There was a fantastic movie called The Battle of Algiers,

who arrived for the 1974 festival,

and which he later took to the Institute...

DIRECTOR

...and we were impressed and said: "Nair Sahib, we must have this film!"

And he said, "Let me make a plan."

I think he said with the film's distributors,

who had taken the film, and said:

"Can you leave this version behind?"

And they: "But we think you has a good copy of Pather Panchali..."

"Yes!"

Therefore, I am sure that the box who hadThe Battle of Algierswritten,

returned to France with a set of coils called Pather Panchali

and we are left with The Battle of Algiers.

When I was at the Institute,

There were only four of us or five girls in the entire Institute.

ACTRESS

I was the only girl that I could go to the evening sessions.

That was when Nair Sahib watched the films,

why Nair Sahib I said to my housekeeper at the inn

that I actually sat down to watch the film.

That I didn't wander off, but

That's where I learned everything about cinema.

To you, my noble son.

Yes, you finally head to the mountains!

Dada, I really wanted to live!

- I love living! - What happened?

Dada, I will live!

- Dada, I will live! - What are you saying?

Dada, say it just once, I will live!

Dada!

Dada, I want to live!

Dada, I want to live!

- What are you talking about? - Dada, I want to live!

- I want to live! - What's wrong with you?

- What's wrong with you? - I want to live!

I want to live!

I want to live!

I want to live!

I want to live!

One of these rooms ended up becoming

in Ritwik Ghatak's permanent room.

I think it must be one of these rooms here.

It is, again, a historic site,

where we used to have long discussions about cinema,

until late.

Ritwik used to be surrounded by people like Emperor Akbar.

People from different backgrounds.

And in a way, Nair Sahib was one of them.

He was like a colleague, at that time,

a colleague of ours. He was...

...getting perspective about cinema from an archival angle,

whereas we were obviously

working with the lens and with light and...

... with interpretation, music, etc.

He hated Bergman, he was a charlatan, he said!

Some of his great inspirers they were people like Dovzhenko.

It was a relationship of arrogance

very strange on the one hand and submissiveness of the other.

And Mr. Ghatak asked: "Hey, Nair! What's the movie tonight?"

So he said the movie,

and Ghatak would say: "I don't like this director. Another film!"

And then he would say, "Can I show both?"

And both films were shown in a single night.

Two films. For us it was great for there to be this debate between them.

We watched two films, one after the other.

But I believe that Mr. Nair noticed the eccentricity...

... and singularity of a type called Ghatak,

and allowed him to have this guy control in the evening sessions.

He used to say that Satyajit I had only made a film and a half,

the Pather Panchali and the first half of Aparajito.

Of course, the example of achievement what he must be talking about

must be the sequence from Benares in Aparajito.

There was a display from Double Suicideby Shinoda,

and we were all very excited because it was a new version,

coming directly from Japan, from Japanese archives.

We were all called and Ghatak Sahib sat with us

and we were about 40 near him, around him.

And then the film started.

And Double Suicide is kind of demonstration in the art of puppets.

And I should have seen Ghatak getting angry,

He said, "What is this?

This is an insult to Japanese theater, to Japanese puppets.

The theater should stay in the theater, should not be mixed with cinema.

Children, stand up! Let's go!

Nair Sahib, you must not show such films on campus!"

And he left!

And after he left, Nair Sahib said, "Well, go then,

I'm going to continue watching the movie."

No, I don't think that's true. It must be Hariharan's imagination.

I remember meeting Shinoda at the Tokyo Film Festival.

Immediately after I obtained Double Suicide to the Archive

I saw it and was impressed.

That's why I really wanted to to catch his other films too.

Because I saw who he was an excellent director,

that you were trying to find a kind of synthesis

between the theatrical language and the cinematographic medium.

Is it Miss Tomioka?

Almost finished?

Almost, except for the suicide part.

The lovers' suicide sequence...

They pass a cemetery.

Have you found a location?

The Ghatak, you know, must have had a few drinks at night,

and Jagat Murrari, the director at the time,

didn't like someone's idea drink within the Institute campus.

Ghatak came to know about this and said:

"Okay, I'm not staying here, I'm leaving."

I was on the other side of the street in another one-bedroom apartment,

and he said, "I'll stay with you."

That was a beautiful time.

We share the same room for almost two months.

During your lifetime, his first film was not released.

Nagarik. Later, exactly one year later...

RITWIK GHATAK'S WIFE

... a coil was found at the Bengal film laboratory,

which was sent to Pune. Mr. Nair later said:

"We will preserve all the work by Ritwik Ghatak."

He later made a duplicate of the negative and a version he sent us.

Soon from the Lumi�re brothers to Griffith and the more modern pioneers,

I sought to obtain your works too,

and I must mention Ernest Lindgren from the British Film Institute

which helped us a lot in the construction of the project for the Archive.

We exchanged Sant Tukaram with the British Archive

by Hitchcock's Blackmail.

BLACKMAIL

We send a film with 12 reels, they will send

a film we want of equal length,

It is an agreement by exchange. No money involved.

In fact, we receive many films from the Russian Archive as a gift.

They sent about 20 films,

as part of a Russian retrospective...

... of silent films, with film companies

and after circulation, they said: "You can keep the films in the Archive.

We don't want them back."

It contained films such as The Battleship Potemkine, The Strike, Old and New,

Alexander Nevsky, the great films of Eisenstein, Pudovkin,

and from the Russian masters, Dovzhenko.

It was there that I saw my first Tarkovsky film.

PHOTOGRAPHY DIRECTOR / DIRECTOR

That's when I realized

who is not the director of photography the team captain,

but rather the director.

I was so involved with the visual part as well as the spirituality of the film.

And, practically, in this way,

my concept of achievement started with the movies

which were exhibited by Shri P. K. Nair.

We received The Roadfrom the Yugoslav Archive.

Somehow, they had a copy.

AND...

...sometimes, I remember, from the Czech Archive,

we receive american films with Czech subtitles.

And I said: "After all, it's in English.

So we can keep them even if they have Czech subtitles."

Some directors like John Abraham they were marked by Mr. Nair.

They both liked it a lot from the films of Paolo Pasolini.

And one night, apparently, John Abraham went to Nair's house,

and demanded to see it immediately The Gospel According to Saint Matthew,

and it was three in the morning!

And apparently, Nair Sahib took it to the safe, took out the film,

they set it up,

and waited for the projectionist, Mr. Ramayan, arrive...

PHOTOGRAPHY DIRECTOR

... and then they watched the film until the morning.

And after that, sat down and discussed their film,

the next one from John, Amma Ariyan, which I filmed,

until nine in the morning. They had breakfast and he left.

We had a job in which we had to study a director

and I chose Hitchcock.

I remember meeting Nair Sahib and saying that I wanted to see the films...

DIRECTOR

... and at the time there were no readers, Of course, they were still a dream.

He told me: "Okay, those are the movies we have."

We have in the Archive about a dozen or more films,

and he told me to see Psycho,

The Unknown of Norte-Express and another film, Defamation,

and I used to sit at Steenbeck and analyzed it, roll by roll,

and he would tell me...

Which is almost as if someone is Up there guiding you to watch the films.

I must have seen them about ten times at Steenbeck,

and have seen every film backwards forward, studying plans.

I think somewhere, This is still in my head...

I mean, help me. When I'm making a film,

I remember these things well.

Let's watch all those movies of people from all over the world

and one thing they had in common In these films it was the risks.

There were scratches on the end of the coil.

It was something very interesting,

it was also very nostalgic.

And recently when I was filming for M. F. Hussain's Meenaxi,

when I was shooting for the movie... And when the film was shown,

M. F. Hussain was very happy for seeing the colors and all that.

Afterwards he used to say: “But, Santosh, what happened to the risks?

Will they show up? Will it happen?" Because for them it's something nostalgic.

I think cinema has so many meanings different for different people.

And this experience arises, basically, to see it in a cinema.

Which is always where the magic is, I believe.

BREAK

THE SACRED RIVER

I got the filmThe Sacred River by chance.

I knew Mr. Amit Khanna then. I still know him.

And he said to me one time, "Look, I came across a film, The Sacred River."

DIRECTOR

"Seriously, The Sacred River? Renoir's?"

He didn't even know who Renoir was, or what was The Sacred River!

Then he showed it to me. And I asked Nair, I knew him well.

He was also excited. The film had been filmed in India

by Renoir, and Satyajit Ray also participated.

He said, "That will be, Definitely a nice acquisition."

So, I took the film and gave it to Nair. He stayed with him.

Since it was a government organization,

I think it was, perhaps, implicit for them to pay something,

for this he paid me 21,000 rupees.

Of course, I kept them. I never gave them to my friend,

for Amit Khanna.

A Bengali film, Jamai Babu,

we learned about him, thanks to Mr. Mrinal Sen.

He went to film Akaler Sandhaneand found a coil in an old building,

and immediately, I got the information and I got the coil.

September 7, 1980

A film crew leaves Calcutta on the way to a village.

A village called Hatui.

The name of the film...

It was in 1980 that I made a film about...

... the great famine of 1943.

It was in a village attacked by famine, even in 1980.

So I went there and recreated 1943.

We were all in a big house, now in ruins.

And there were a lot of people there.

There were 13 people sharing the house, the building.

All rooms full. There were no rooms for singles.

So one of them, from Calcutta, I used to come once a week.

He said to me: "My father made a film a long time ago.

His name is Jamai Babu, which means brother-in-law."

- Are all the rooms like this? - Big and small.

So, from under the table, from under the towel,

he took it off. The reels,

there were several coils, about ten or 12, I don't remember.

I went back to Calcutta, called Nair

and said: "Here's some material."

UPEN BABU'S BROTHER-IN-LAW

One of the Indian silent films

we got it from my colleague in Bangkok,

from the Archives of Thailand.

Dome, he was a great friend of mine, a passionate guy,

and he said that when he went to the box from a Bangkok cinema,

found, in that cabin, an old coil, looked at it

and saw... Savitri.

He thought it should be an Indian film

and immediately contacted me saying:

"I found one of your old movies. Are you interested?"

And I said yes. He only had one condition. Said:

"Please send us a copy to our Archive."

He came to discover that there was three reels of the first film in Kannada

in a warehouse in Hubli.

Hubli is a city in northern Karnataka.

He tried very hard to get these three coils.

And it's not a complete film, There are only three coils.

But, you know what, I was very moved by this,

because this It is the true spirit of an archivist.

Anyone would have said: "Is the film significant?

Will it have any important value later?

If not, let's not bother." He would never say that.

Because he knew that, since it was the first film in Kannada,

the first film spoken in Kannada,

he knew the historical importance of this film.

DIRECTOR K. SUBRAHMANYAM

The south contributes around 60 percent Indian films

among these four languages: Tilugu, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam.

One of the most important films South India

what we got was theThyagabhoomi by K. Subrahmanyam.

The south specialized in mythology and folklore,

but were also responsible for some

of socially relevant films

and Thyagabhoomi was one of the most important.

I was also lucky enough to meet

another legendary director from the south,

the great artist S. S. Vasan from Gemini Studios.

He said: "Of all the films I've done so far,

I consider it only two or three are worth preserving."

Then he told me that the films were Chandralekha, of course,

which was one of the landmarks of Indian cinema.

And the second wasMr. Sampat which was a Hindi film.

It was the Hindi version of a Tamil film

what he had done previously, titled Miss Malini.

The third was Avvaiyar,the great film in Tamil about the great poetess.

These were the three films

and he gave a copy of Chandralekha,

as a contribution from you, without any cost.

Good morning! This is Nair from Pune.

Shivendra Singh is doing a film about me, you know?

He was trying to contact you to record an interview.

They will go to Trivandrum on days seven and eight.

In a way...

... I was responsible for saving the only copy byMarthanda Varma.

The first film had been totally lost.

It had been the second film produced in Kerala.

It was the creation of a person called Sundar Raj.

He had worked as an assistant of a relative of yours,

who had been the first director, J.C. Daniel.

Of course, the first film,

when we talk about him, there is nothing available about it,

except a few frames who managed to survive.

There is nothing available, not even the script.

It was a friend of mine, a journalist friend of mine,

who had a great interest in cinema, who told me there was...

... a copy of Marthanda Varma, the second film in Malayalam...

... was available, somewhere.

He also knew who had it.

It was Kamalalaya's book warehouse, right in the heart of the city.

Very close to the Secretariat building.

So, I took advantage of the tip,

and with some friends of mine, I went there to see.

It was in the basement of the building.

In fact, no one approached that box.

They were afraid... It was treated like dynamite.

It could explode at the mere friction,

So we open the box

and we saw that it smelled bad, but that wasn't a problem.

The film was based on a famous novel, a Malayalam novel by C. V. Raman Pillai,

and the publishing house was a warehouse of books, a warehouse in Kamalalaya.

They published it.

The filmmakers who had made the film in 1930,

they did an invitation-only exhibition, before showing to the public.

And, as they did not obtain publisher's rights,

were processed and received a precautionary measure.

The film was confiscated of cinema after its premiere!

Therefore, it was never shown to the public.

FERVOUS DEVOTEES IN THE TEMPLE OF LOVE

We checked the records

and we saw that this film was not in the censorship records.

This meant that the film it hadn't even been censored.

I remember taking the box which contained the film,

in the trunk of the car and we took it to the office.

And then, she was sent to Pune.

And in Pune, they discovered that the pine nuts had disappeared

and that it was highly flammable. It couldn't work on a projector,

so, K. P. R. Nair, who was a lecturer at the Institute,

created a system

through which he could copy the film, frame by frame.

When the film was, finally, complete,

we saw that it was a very valuable material,

besides being just a film.

It was a documentary about the Aarattu procession.

STATE ELEPHANTS DECORATED WITH HOUDAS

It's very typical... The royalty, the maharajah of the state

goes to the procession with...

ON AN ADORNED PALANKIN

... all the cavalry, everything accompanies him.

It is a spectacular procession.

Basically, Sundar Raj's idea was to make it an attraction,

an additional attraction for the people

watched at the Capitol Theatre, where it was being displayed.

There was a distributor called Krishna Pictures.

PRESIDENT OF THE FEDERATION OF INDIAN CINEMA COMPANIES

He said to me: "Come to my workshop, in a warehouse."

They had a car repair shop.

"There's been a film here for a long time.

You watch the film and, If you're interested, you can show it off."

And I saw the movie,

it was theVasantasenaof R. Nagendra Rao.

A very interesting film and very old.

So I picked him up and took him to Chamundeshwari stadium

and checked the roll.

They cleaned the roll and decided to show the film.

So I invited the press and also the cinematographic society

to the Chamundeshwari stadium for a display.

And after the screening, all the press, the Kannada press and others,

gave the event a lot of publicity.

And Nair read about it.

Nair came to know and read about it. And he called me.

"Hey, Mr. Rao, it looks like you found a film called Vasantasena.

Help me get the film?" I told him I was available for that.

Then I went to Krishna Pictures and said: "Why don't you give this,

we will make some copies, some extra negatives, and we preserve it in the Archive."

"No problem!"

Then Nair came, one day, and we help him carry the film.

It's still in the Archive.

I found not only my father's films, but I also found leaflets...

...from the past. Posters of my father's films that were there

and found a part of my childhood that wasn't in my family album

or anywhere else I live.

But it was there.

T. P. Kailasam made a film.

We heard about him, but we didn't even see him.

They all disappeared.

That's why I often feel

that we have a rich past, but a very bad story.

While the West has a significant past,

not a rich past, but a very significant story.

After winning the National Award, I took the film there.

Show it to students � team and teachers.

Nair Sahib also saw him.

After showing, Nair Sahib called me and said:

"You have to come and meet me."

I went and met him in your office. He said:

"How many copies of the film do you have?"

I said, "With this one, one more."

DIRECTOR

So he said, "Leave this copy here."

I said: "Nair Sahib, I can't leave you here."

"No," he said. "Leave her here.

You can do everything with the other copy,

Leave this one here.” He didn't let me take another copy.

He said, "Send the bill.

I will make sure it gets paid in a week."

As agreed, that's what happened.

He was so intimate with the films.

He smelled movies, ate movies,

he...

... drank movies.

He was like that. Nair.

Another fascinating thing was

when you saw your weight on the old scale,

a card comes out

and on the back of the card I was always a movie star,

especially Hollywood stars,

with a short biography two or three lines.

And I remember collecting them all these scales

which contained several stars,

the great Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich...

...Cary Grant and all these big stars.

That's why I had this fascination

for collecting things related to cinema,

in any form, within my means.

He was so in love with cinema,

passionately in love with cinema...

DIRECTOR

...that sometimes I used to feel

that perhaps he neglected his family.

I used to think about it, then and now.

Maybe he should pay more attention To the family, to their children.

It wasn't a 9:00 to 5:00 job.

He left in the morning...

DAUGHTER OF MR. NAIR

... around 9:00. But for him,

there was no fixed time to return home.

He used to come home very late.

Sometimes after midnight.

But there was no day when it would arrive At 17:30, 18:00 or 18:30.

He never ate on time

and, most of the time, my mother I had to wait for him to get home.

Finally, she decided to go and call him.

Like this, every day she used to walk from the house

where we were, even at the office, which was relatively close.

She used to bring him home.

If she weren't,

he forgot to eat and slept in the office.

Once, he slept all night in the office.

He woke up in the morning and came home.

He was very careless with your meals...

... and your basic needs,

and my mother literally had of following him for everything and for nothing.

After retirement, he changed a lot.

He's active, but I feel...

It can be said that, in fact, our relationship with him has changed.

We passed, more or less... We spend time with each other...

... and even when we speak,

we talk about a lot of things, on the phone and when we meet.

Before there were no such conversations.

After my retirement, I built this house, hoping...

... stay in Trivandrum in this beautiful landscape.

After my wife's death...

Of course I got involved too in films in Trivandrum.

I started the first two editions of the Kerala international festival,

I also created a video festival.

So that's how I kept myself busy with films even in Trivandrum.

With the directors, with film companies,

I founded a film company, here, called FILKA,

but I still felt a little lonely,

because we spent a lot of time of our time in Pune,

the best part of my life was spent in Pune,

and I became very fond of Pune.

I'm coming back to Thiruvananthapuram after 20 years.

KERALA INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL

I have very old colleagues,

some elderly directors, film critics,

people who created Indian cinema

and which gave it international status.

My compliments to...

... Adoor, Nair Sahib. I learned so much from them.

These two special people, Nair Sahib and Adoor,

when they are present, You can see that it's a good festival...

... you can see that it is a legitimate festival, We know the films will be good.

A lot of things were happening in the Archive after my retirement,

something that hurt me because the movies were not being treated properly,

the ones I got.

So I always had some longing for there to return

and see what was going on

and at least try and convince people

so that they can take care of this inheritance.

Because there was so much hostility against Mr. Nair?

In fact, he didn't even could enter the Archive.

FORMER ARCHIVE DIRECTOR NATIONAL CINEMA NATIONAL OF INDIA

And I remember that, when I wanted to record with him,

It took me almost 11 months to, Finally, get permission

to film with Mr. Nair at the Archive.

One reason I could deduce...

...it was his "narcissism"...

... yours...

... openness about things and to see defects in everything.

If there was something wrong with some decision taken in the Archive,

he used to question it. Even as a citizen.

Someone may have been resentful with this.

Beyond that, I don't see any other reason.

The Archive must be well maintained.

It is not well maintained. It needs to be well preserved.

It must have a specific temperature,

need a level specific humidity,

and cannot have dust.

For people to come and go.

What do they do... We have the warehouse,

when they remove something from the warehouse,

they take you open for both divisions.

As if they were intermediate places,

where you can get the film and see how it is.

The windows are open, the air comes in, the dust comes in.

Nobody cares. The film is there.

No, they don't know the importance of all this,

because we don't have an archival culture.

What happened once was that the federation had

a meeting of the central council, in Bangalore.

I asked Nair to give three special packages, special films.

He gave Jules and Jim which is by Fran�ois Truffaut,

a wonderful film that the people of Calcutta wanted to see.

So I got it from the Archive.

I took it to Bal Bhavan and showed it off.

Unfortunately, he had cut the ends of the ribbon,

because I was very busy with the meeting, I didn't even see it.

And the film had been sent

and there was no coil and the ends of the ribbon were cut...

There were no ends of the tape. He was enraged, I tell you.

He said to me, "Mr. Rao, my friendship with you has disappeared.

You have to bear the consequences.

No, I don't even like talking to you!" He was so severe.

I was so desperate. I didn't even know what...

It was my fault, I wasn't interested,

because I was connected to something else.

Believe it or not, the following week, At my own cost, I went to Pune.

I begged him, "I'm at your feet, please forgive me this time,

This is my mistake."

Every day, he looked forward to going to work.

He used to wake up in the morning,

brushed my teeth,

and the first thing I did when he sat down he was

wait for a call from someone who was very close to him.

Someone from the world of cinema.

He was waiting for the phone call or waited for the doorbell to ring,

for someone to come home.

However, we were always looking forward to

he spoke to us about other family matters

and to discuss the evening program and everything

which he had no interest in.

This is my wife with Bijju, my eldest son,

around three, four years old.

This is my wife's sister and her husband.

This is also from a family reunion.

This is Bijju and this must be Beena.

This is our family.

This is also Beena.

It was only after we were of some age and grow a lot,

That's when we realized it wasn't

because he didn't like us,

or because he didn't want to be with us,

but it was his passion for work,

It was his love for cinema that took him away from us.

And it was because of his commitments...

...that he didn't have time for us,

and, slowly and gradually, we started to realize

and we got used to the situation at home...

...and now we are, more or less, as friends.

We don't think about what we lost in our childhood,

we relate to him more on a friendship level,

rather than a relationship between father and children.

Mostly my mother went through all this adversity,

because she had to interpret a double role.

The role of mother is that of father, to fill his absence.

His absence was so felt at home that we get closer to each other.

Me and my brothers, we are very close,

We were even closer to our mother.

But at the same time, whenever he came home,

It was something we looked forward to.

We were always by his side and every moment was dedicated to him.

We used to spend our time with him when he was at home.

And...

We saw the Summer of 42 together,

even though we're not old enough to see it anymore!

But we both like it.

Those moments that are...

...pleasant as they are Embarrassing stories are worth sharing.

Are worth sharing at one point objective cinematographic point of view.

These are the beautiful moments that I spent with him.

SEXUAL SCANDAL: ACTRESS AND EMPLOYEE ARRESTED

WITH BESSON, TAVERNIER AND FOOTBALL, IFFI CHANGES PERSPECTIVE

You know, I retired in 1991.

And I continued to Pune for a few more years,

because my wife was under treatment.

She suffered from cancer.

So finally, I moved to Trivandrum in 1995.

And in a way, I felt like I was missing something.

I was missing the interaction

with young film students and with researchers.

Then my wife passed away, and in a way I felt...

...lost in Trivandrum and...

... wanted, desperately, return to Pune.

So I came back to Pune around 1998.

And I decided that I would continue staying in Pune, because...

... Pune is the place where I spent the best part of my career

and where he also built the Archive from the beginning.

Therefore, I had an emotional relationship with the institution.

It's like a baby to me and I don't want to be away from him.

I think all over the world, when there are files

and when there are people who were involved

in the process of preserving Indian cinema, Nair is a species with a legendary name.

He is a man who is very respected,

because long before of this Bollywood nonsense

and Indian cinema has become fashionable, he knew the importance of preservation.

That you don't have history if you don't have past and what is the past?

�, in fact, store film reels and rolls

and be able to show Genuine films for future generations.

One of the great pleasures, personal pleasures, I must say,

It's when I see a movie that I like, and that I would like to share with others.

The way I started showing from the Archive to the public...

...it was one of my wishes so that these films could be shown

to a larger section of society.

When talking about a great man as Nair,

It is necessary to talk about other names, because...

...they all arose in one period of history and one helped the other,

one built the other, one praises the other.

Satish Bahadur, for example,

he would appear with films, obtained through P. K. Nair,

in our village, in Heggodu,

and K. V. Subanna directed Ninasam.

That now, It is run by her son Akshara. Continue.

And I had a film analysis course

and Satish Bahadur spoke immensely about the films he had shown.

And people were talking about Bergman!

The person behind was K. V. Subbanna, who was a cinema activist.

He watched our...

If I remember correctly, to our course of film analysis, in 1975.

After the course, he was very inspired.

He wanted to have a program film analysis,

at his cinema in Heggodu.

He used the cinema as a way to get attention

and, mainly, to educate and...

... confer a value system � local people,

who had no exposure to cinema because there was no cinema there.

We provide the films. They were all 16 mm at the time.

We went by train and then we had to travel by bus

over some distance to get to the cinema.

He had a regular audience who sponsored cinema programs,

Yakshagana dance programs, which he used to organize.

And the first time, we showed films

like Bicycle Thieves, �s Gates of Hell, Pather Panchali

and we had deep discussions.

Bahadur Sahib used to speak in English

and Subbanna translated after every sentence or two.

This way, we were able to break the language barrier,

which was something else what we tried to do...

We thought that education and cinematographic consciousness

it should reach the popular level,

even to people who didn't know how to speak English.

On the Heggodu stage, the festival it used to occur over a week.

ARECA NUT FARMER

The movies we watch were shown on the Heggodu stage.

Otherwise, we didn't know any films.

In the cinema, a very important film for me it is the Gates of Hell.

RETIRED SCHOOL EMPLOYEE

And Bicycle Thieves, Pather Panchali,

we watched these films with interest.

Pather Panchali, Charlie Chaplin, The Gates of Hell, The World of Apu.

ARECA NUT FARMER

These films were shown and people used to see them.

For ten days, until the end of the workshop,

people didn't think in nothing else besides films.

Even the people on the roads,

after watching the drama, no, after seeing the films,

they used to just talk about movies.

The next day, when they came to see the films, they talked about the previous film.

PROJECTIONIST

In such a way that, for ten days, a new environment was created.

Pather Panchaliwas very good,

the story behind the poor Brahmins, of your problems,

Even today, we remember the end,

when he had to leave the village

to buy a sarifor the woman, things for the children,

or when the daughter dies.

On those days, we could watch films like that. We are fortunate.

At a time like this, we were able to watch foreign films.

In fact, this film is not foreign, It is totally Indian.

There are several films, but The Gates of Hell It's the kind of film that stays in your heart.

After that, the story of a man who hangs himself and drowns,

Owl Creek, is a movie you remember.

I liked La Rivi�re du Hibou.

It was such a good movie,

that took us to heaven and we were stuck watching.

In the end, we felt that we had been deceived.

"Where do we land?"

When the story begins, he would be dreaming.

We couldn't guess who was dreaming. We just followed him.

Let's just see it to see whether he was saved or not.

When we showed the films here,

Subbanna used to sit upstairs and made comments.

Because the films were in English, people here didn't understand.

When he spoke, during the exhibition,

if he spoke less, I used to turn up the sound.

As soon as I realized he was going to comment,

I used to turn the volume down here.

During that time, he explained in Kannada.

There's something in the movies, just through them

we can overcome tongues...

... and national cultures,

thus, cinema is, thus, a new medium.

Even a novel, if you read a novel, a Russian novel,

It is very difficult to understand cultural facts.

It takes a long time to understand a novel,

but if it's a Russian film and if the interpreter is good

and if it's an old movie, then we remember ancient Russia.

I was always asking Nair for films.

The first thing we ask it was theBicycle Thieves.

ROURKELA CINEMA CLUB

We showed this film in a Meneka cinema at 7:30,

because the morning movie was shown at 10:00.

We had to end the session before 9:30.

I obtained the film from the National Archives.

Mr. Nair gave the film, along with lots of instructions.

How to deal with the film and things like that. And we exhibited it, in Meneka, at 7:30.

Believe it or not,

the movement had so much support from people,

that the atrium was full that day at 7:30.

We started Saturday sessions from 1970 onwards.

Chose strange names from the telephone book

and sent them an invitation: "We are showing this film,

If you're interested, come along."

And asked them to leave an envelope with an address,

if they wanted to be invited for the following Saturday.

Then it became very popular and the sessions were presented

and I said to them, "If you're not in a hurry, you can stay longer,

we can talk about the movie, interact with you,

and talk about what they think of the film and all that."

That was the activity

what I liked and wanted most...

At that time, We didn't have our own cinema,

we were using the cinema from the Cinema Institute.

One of my dreams was that, when the Archive had its own cinema,

there were daily sessions.

He understands?

That was my dream, I would say,

daily, five showings starting at 2pm until almost midnight.

I have done a film titled Ghatashraddha. That was my first film, in 1978.

The film was processed here, in a laboratory in Bangalore

and, in the mid-80s, the laboratory closed.

So the employees asked us let us take the negatives.

We didn't know what to do.

My producer, Mr. Sadanand Suvarna, was from Bombay.

He took it and kept it in a laboratory in Mumbai.

Since it had not been processed in the Bombay laboratory,

what did they do went to leave it in some corner.

One day, a friend of Suvarna came and said, "The scrolls are displayed outside.

Why are they like this?"

So we collect the film and when we open it,

had gained rust and some negatives were damaged

and Nair Sahib came to know about it.

He immediately collected all the negatives and stored them in the Archive,

and, as I reviewed them, he saw that, on three coils,

the sound negative had been ruined.

So he got a copy somewhere,

Duplicated the film and saved it.

If not for Nair Sahib's efforts,

it wouldn't be possible to see currently Ghatashraddha.

There was no cutoff point. There were no cuts in his life.

He just continued and the movies too.

It would start at 22:00

and would continue until one in the morning and suddenly, at that point,

there would be one more movie that would have to be seen

and he would say, "Design it." And everyone those excellent projectionists...

And it must be said that Nair Sahib it was very helpful

by an excellent projectionist called Ramayan.

Ramayan was a kind of backbone.

He was tireless. I was always showing movies

and I sometimes went back to see

that Ramayan was also watching films with equal enthusiasm!

And this archivist duo

and projectionist is something historic for me!

He was involved in the content of the film and also in the characters.

This is a big deal. When I called him at 5:00 or 6:00,

He was there ready with the coils in the sound department.

No problem. He loved his job

and he loved the cinema and that kept us together.

This is the safe I planned

and I prepared it in the early 90s,

a year before of having retired from the Archive.

Back then, if I remember correctly, we had 12,000 films,

of which 8000 were Indians and the rest were foreigners.

And most of them were positive copies,

some major positives, some duplicates of negatives.

Thus, the temperature was maintained, mainly, for the positive ones,

at about 12 to 13 degrees centigrade,

because the negatives and duplicates need cooler temperature.

I know that new safes they were built for this

and I'm sure this safe contains some of the great films I managed to obtain

to the Archive from Raja Harishchandra by Dadsaheb Phalke,

Sant Tukaramby Prabhat, Duniya Na Mane, Achhut Kanyafrom Bombay Talkies,

Devdasfrom Barua...

Kalpanaby Uday Shankar.

Sanjeev Kumar came to me and I met with him.

He said, "I got a contract to act in a Satyajit Ray film,

Shatranj Ke Khiladi.

I know the man, But I've never seen one of his films.

I'm ashamed to know him, the great man,

without ever having seen his films.

So I came here to watch the movies you can show me."

He came with his mother, rented an apartment

and stayed here for a month,

and every night, I displayed a Satyajit Ray film for him,

because of the interest he had...

Imagine a movie star popular in Bombay

coming to Pune and spending a month here

to see all Satyajit Ray films.

If we can't handle our lives,

how can we deal with the British Army?

You're right.

So why the concern?

I don't worry about that.

So what are you worried about?

Who am I going to play chess with?

He's really here, Meer.

And there is food. We can eat and play at the same time.

When it gets dark, we can go home.

We need the darkness to hide our faces, Meer.

If a film is made in 35mm, we have to preserve the 35mm format.

If the film is made in Cinemascope, We have to keep it in Cinemascope.

If done in color, we have to keep it in color.

And, whatever its format,

as much as possible we have to maintain the same format.

Suppose the film was shot in 16mm, It's best to keep it at 16mm.

I think this is the right approach of an archivist,

keep the film in its original format in which it is done.

But if you want it for promotion or distribution, or wider use,

other alternatives can be used.

For example, in 35mm, if only if you have a copy,

It is possible to have copies in 16 mm for distribution to film companies.

Or, nowadays, on DVD.

In my second year, I was watching Ozu's The Trip to Tokyo.

I was watching the movie The Trip to Tokyo.

Saw the movie and was walking up the steps to the inn,

to my room...

...and suddenly I realized...

... who didn't write anything to my parents six years ago.

I was living abroad, I was married,

and perhaps he would have spoken to them, but he had not written to them.

I went up to my room, got a postcard

and I wrote a letter to my parents saying to them, "How are you?"

Now, what does the movie have to do with this?

The Trip to Tokyotalks about time what happens to the parents.

It's such a gentle, discreet and lyrical film.

But it led me to write a postcard to my parents...

... and simply say: "How are you guys? I haven't really met you guys."

I think the postcard is just a symbol. It's just one aspect of much more.

It is a symbol of capacity to understand the world we live in...

...and, strangely, I think a person like Mr. Nair...

... is very responsible for the discovery of each student's own being.

They meet in a strange way.

I found myself, in my own way,

and I am sure that all students met in another way

and started making their films.

They found themselves across the world

which Nair Sahib gave them, through your cinema

which he so carefully wrote down, so that he warned us, showed us.

I will never forget the first time I sawO Acossado.

And I was very young and there were some plans

that I couldn't understand, the softness of these plans.

So, I spoke to Mr. Nair

and he told me, he was very reserved,

wasn't the very friendly type, he was very quiet and...

...and he said, "Very well, if you really want to study this...

... I'll give you a copy of the film for two hours

and you can study the pattern assembly of the Acossado.”

I will never forget the moment

when I had this film in my hands, 16 mm version,

I went to the editing room, at six in the morning,

and I realized that I had found some smooth plans because,

in the previous scene, Jean-Luc Godard had done the following:

when Belmondo enters, instead of a static frame,

he had gone up to the chamber,

the camera moves up for two or three frames

and then there is a cut. And when you go inland,

the camera rises at the same speed, again, for four or five frames.

And that was why the plan was so smooth.

I couldn't see that on the big screen!

Things like that...

P. K. Nair loved his films, I didn't want anything to happen to them,

but when I saw a student who was inquisitive, who wanted to learn,

he became accessible. It said: "Take the film and study it."

If we wanted to watch a movie,

Let's go to him: "Nair Sahib, can we watch this film?"

He would look at us like this,

to evaluate us. "Why do you want to see the film?

Are interested in seeing just the film

or want to see something besides the movie and learn something more about him?"

If he were convinced that we wanted to see the film to study,

he wouldn't say anything,

but at night we will see that the film was on the bulletin board:

"Today's showing..." That movie. This is...

But he made sure that the desires of students were satisfied.

But whoever wanted to see a movie just for fun:

"Sir, I want to see the movie, but I don't know why..."

No, he wouldn't show the film!

I told Mr. Nair Sahib, "If I believe that I have to be a good director,

I should see a movie, at least 100 times."

And that was difficult to happen, at the time,

because there were no VHS players and discs.

He was considerate enough to say, "Keep this movie."

The film was The Potemkine Battleship.

THE DRAWLIGHT POTEMKIN

it's impossible to imagine today that someone from the Archive

told a young student:

"You can have this 16mm film,

go as many times as you want and then return it."

And honestly, I must have I've seen this film more than 100 times.

I remember him as a fatherly figure.

And I would like to tell you directly, Shivi,

if I am what I am today, 90 percent is thanks to Nair Sahib

and Satish Bahadur Sahib. To these two teachers.

Two great teachers who showed us a lot,

not only from Indian cinema, but from world cinema.

If it weren't for this exhibition to world cinema,

we wouldn't be where we are today.

And we enjoy the special privilege to see world cinema

with Nair Sahib, first thing in the morning, at 6:30.

It was the time he saw the new copies that came from abroad.

Because, from 8:30 onwards, the Institute began operating.

So, he came at 6:30.

We received a secret message from him

saying there would be a showing at 6:30.

I sat there, in the movie theater,

brushing your teeth and watching a Norwegian film!

It was wonderful!

I myself came from a family who was not wealthy.

Therefore, I had told Nair Sahib

that, financially, it was a problem to me if he could help.

He found a solution. I offered to clean the films.

Every month, used to clear two or three films

and by film, he used to pay me 50 rupees.

And that got me out of trouble.

But what was most touching was the gesture.

I don't think it was done in official terms. And how he did it, only he knows.

Reel number four, famous song: "Door hato, duniyawalon, Hindustan humara hai",

with Mumtaz Shanti on stage.

Understand...

And the fantastic The Battleship Potemkine,

coil number six, It is the sequence on the Odessa staircase.

Understand...

The Passion of Joan of Arc, Carl Dreyer, one of my favorite films.

We got it from the Belgian Archive.

This kind of...

Pyaasa, reel number nine!

"Aaj mohe ang laga do", Geeta Dutt's famous song,

which is also a beautiful adaptation to Guru Dutt's cinema.

This is from Awaara, reel number 14.

The famous sequence when Raj Kapoor brings the necklace...

...stolen from his own father to his lover, Nargis.

Beautiful film... Wild Strawberries, Bergman,

A classic. Here is Tarkovsky's Sacrifice.

In India, to honor the guests on special occasions,

women decorate the floors from houses with rice flour and water.

With thisrangoli, We welcome you to this film,

filmed entirely in India.

Hands up!

We used to have a whole session where on the eve of Holi,

we chose songs from various films.

In Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, and we showed all these songs.

And we all sat making a list of songs

and finally we said to Nair Sahib which songs we wanted.

And I remember that he gave instructions to someone

and who said to him, "Okay, this song, this film, reel number such,

this song, coil number such, Get her out of this movie."

It was really fun to watch.

He was a man who had thousands of films in your Archive,

but he remembered all the movies,

what reel was that scene on? or song, which is fascinating.

When I think about it, If I have to remember my movies,

I don't think I can...

Once the assembly is finished, We no longer remember our film.

At 7:00, Sunday morning.

After a night of fun and drinks

and talk about cinema! To change the world!

Let's make masterpieces and all that!

After we talked all night,

At 7:00, a large part of the Institute would be ready to work,

to go to the Main Room and see the phenomenal censorship cuts!

Something that kids these days You won't know what we're talking about.

They were parts of films who had been censored

of the film, and these censorship cuts

were sent in a small package separately to the Archive

to be restored in the films, So, the cuts had to be seen...

... and somehow it became known

that Nair Sahib sat to see these things alone!

He allowed students to come and see.

So it became a ritual on Sunday morning.

There were several films from all over the world, of all languages,

that were connected for students to see.

Some were even hilarious.

Some of them were absurd, some were in bad taste!

It was a lot of fun see these old things,

sexy women and cleavage, these scenes!

PHOTOGRAPHY DIRECTOR

I was also told that, when some of the coils were opened,

they were filled with stones or trash paper and things like that,

because no one thought that could be opened again,

after so many years.

The original cuts were sent to the Preservation Institute.

I don't know what for!

DIRECTOR

Thus, Nair Sahib displayed them,

in supposedly very secret sessions.

They weren't...

Because it was censored what we were seeing.

But all students at the Institute they wanted to see these cuts!

I think a person's life It's very short

to save the world's cinema heritage...

... is not just national heritage.

We have such an expanded vision

of the film as a historical part of the world, of humanity.

Therefore, we go beyond borders and...

... we try to save as much as possible, of what records world history,

in film and sounds.

There is a scene where they disembark from the trip...

Yes.

...and she is on one side, Cary Grant is on the other side,

and they are always saying: "This one, that one..."

Do you know?

And they're walking down the hall, I mean...

- The pier. - No, the board.

They are walking through it and everyone has to go their own way,

because their respective you have to go get them

and when they are leaving, Grant kisses the hand

that she was giving to the other actor.

- To her fiancé. - To her fiancé. It was so innovative.

One of my memories is of a movie of compilations by Harold Lloyd,

Harold Lloyd's World of Comedy. I saw him in Udvada.

- Where? - Udvada. It really was.

It is in Gujarat.

It is a place of pilgrimage for the Zoroastrians.

You know, in this life, I wish I had become a director

and I ended up becoming a collector of films. I don't regret it.

In fact, I think

What did I end up doing? it was the right thing.

I never regretted of not having made a film,

despite, as a student, having wanted to become a director.

But having entered this...

... means of preservation and archiving...

... I think there is a lot of work to be done.

It's a shame there aren't many people involved in this activity,

as opposed to filmmaking, where there are a lot of people.

What I miss most

It's the joy of watching movies every night as a routine,

something I did, not only during the Archive, but even before.

I saw a man walking so quickly to the Archive,

to the screening room.

A hurried and young man. I knew him like that.

And now I see him getting old,

age begins to affect him.

Even so, the flame is still there, a call for cinema.

And I think that's what keeps him going.

"Some people learn to make music, Some people can't learn.

It's impossible! Impossible!

I hired you not to make comments, but to teach."

"Sir, what will people think! I'll be a laughing stock!"

"Do you know what people will think? I tell him.

I am director of several newspapers,

you will think that whatever I want them to think!"

If it weren't for him, we would have nothing.

We wouldn't have had anything.

But the tragedy is that there was a P. K. Nair and after him no one else.

Unfortunately, we don't have people nor with a sense of mission

that he had,

nor with the professional knowledge

to be able to take care of a film archive.

What do I really miss these days?

It's the pleasure of the smell of the tape

and the enthusiasm of taking it off the reel

and looking at each frame

and see its status.

And put it on the Steenbeck table

and walking backwards, stopping and taking notes.

That's what I really miss...

And now that we know the tape in cellulose is becoming extinct,

I feel sorry for that because the images we grew up with,

in cinema, they were always those of the optical image

which is projected on the screen, the beautiful and wonderful

black and white images from the 30s and 40s.

And,

in a way, nowadays, when I watch movies,

I don't see the same taste or excitement about looking at an image.

Because, despite all new technology and development,

I couldn't accept

the image quality that we see in the new digital era.

In a way...

... I think there's something missing in these images.

It's very sad for us, older people, the archivists.

But we have to live with these changes that happen around us,

in all aspects of life.

Therefore...

We have

to face the reality of the situation.

END

Subtitles: João Braga

Support us and become a VIP member to remove all ads from %url%