Even as World Heritage is being celebrated today and Indian cinema will complete its journey of 100 years on 3 May this year, there is an unfortunate loss of invaluable cinematic heritage, including the first silent film as well as the first talkie.
Cinema was introduced to India, as soon as it came about in the world, thanks to the Lumiere brothers from France who screened a series of silent shorts Arrival of a Train, Leaving the Factory etc at the Watson Hotel in Bombay (now Mumbai) on 7 July, 1896.
Once the toast of town, the hotel now known as Esplanade Mansions, and India's oldest cast-iron building, is currently in shambles, its old sepia-toned images providing some consolation to heritage lovers.
While Watson may still be standing, Coronation Theatre where India's first silent feature film Raja Harishchandra on 3 May in 1913 and Majestic Cinema where it's first talkie Alam Ara on 14 March, 1931, were screened, have met with much worse fate and have disappeared.
‘I must say Coronation and Majestic were India's history and should have been preserved as heritage for posterity but the love for cinema has been replaced today with pure business. And we anyway do not have a culture of archiving or preservation in our country,’ says P K Nair, founder and ex-director, NFAI.
Nair's life has been captured in a brilliant documentary Celluloid Man which talks about his marathon efforts in single-handedly building, one of the most enviable film archives in India.
Shivendra Singh Dungarpur, who produced and directed this landmark film which releases in theatres on May 3 to coincide with the centenary, has said that over 1700 silent films were made in India of which only 9 or so have survived in the National Film Archives of India, thanks to Nair's efforts.
Nair, who retired from NFAI in 1991, by then had created a massive treasure trove of films and documentaries in black and white and in colour but after his retirement his carefully collected celluloid films and documentaries weren't kept in the right conditions as needed, Dungarpur's film points out.
However, amidst all the pain of losing our historic treasure, it is Nair's efforts only that bring some cheers amidst the gloomy scene on the cinematic heritage front.
By 1991, NFAI had 12,000 films in its collection, out of which 9000 were in Indian languages, the majority being black and white. Included in the Indian category were films made by foreign studios in India or by Europeans living in India.
The archive has rare silent films like Jamai Babu, Ashok Kumar and Devika Rani-starrer Achhut Kanya (1936), V Shantaram's Duniya Na Mane (1937), second oldest Malayalam film Marthanda Varma’ (1933), and also opening fanfares and cards of production companies like Imperial Movietone, Wadia Movietone, Bombay Talkies, AVM Studios and Prabhat Studios, among other rarities.
‘We also had some fine documentaries produced by Burmah Shell on various parts of India, but I don't know what their current status is now,’ the 80-year-old.
He also tells the story of the tragedy of Alam Ara and even some of its few reels left were lost forever as he says ‘filmmakers never cared for what they created’.
Cinema was introduced to India, as soon as it came about in the world, thanks to the Lumiere brothers from France who screened a series of silent shorts Arrival of a Train, Leaving the Factory etc at the Watson Hotel in Bombay (now Mumbai) on 7 July, 1896.
Once the toast of town, the hotel now known as Esplanade Mansions, and India's oldest cast-iron building, is currently in shambles, its old sepia-toned images providing some consolation to heritage lovers.
While Watson may still be standing, Coronation Theatre where India's first silent feature film Raja Harishchandra on 3 May in 1913 and Majestic Cinema where it's first talkie Alam Ara on 14 March, 1931, were screened, have met with much worse fate and have disappeared.
‘I must say Coronation and Majestic were India's history and should have been preserved as heritage for posterity but the love for cinema has been replaced today with pure business. And we anyway do not have a culture of archiving or preservation in our country,’ says P K Nair, founder and ex-director, NFAI.
Nair's life has been captured in a brilliant documentary Celluloid Man which talks about his marathon efforts in single-handedly building, one of the most enviable film archives in India.
Shivendra Singh Dungarpur, who produced and directed this landmark film which releases in theatres on May 3 to coincide with the centenary, has said that over 1700 silent films were made in India of which only 9 or so have survived in the National Film Archives of India, thanks to Nair's efforts.
Nair, who retired from NFAI in 1991, by then had created a massive treasure trove of films and documentaries in black and white and in colour but after his retirement his carefully collected celluloid films and documentaries weren't kept in the right conditions as needed, Dungarpur's film points out.
However, amidst all the pain of losing our historic treasure, it is Nair's efforts only that bring some cheers amidst the gloomy scene on the cinematic heritage front.
By 1991, NFAI had 12,000 films in its collection, out of which 9000 were in Indian languages, the majority being black and white. Included in the Indian category were films made by foreign studios in India or by Europeans living in India.
The archive has rare silent films like Jamai Babu, Ashok Kumar and Devika Rani-starrer Achhut Kanya (1936), V Shantaram's Duniya Na Mane (1937), second oldest Malayalam film Marthanda Varma’ (1933), and also opening fanfares and cards of production companies like Imperial Movietone, Wadia Movietone, Bombay Talkies, AVM Studios and Prabhat Studios, among other rarities.
‘We also had some fine documentaries produced by Burmah Shell on various parts of India, but I don't know what their current status is now,’ the 80-year-old.
He also tells the story of the tragedy of Alam Ara and even some of its few reels left were lost forever as he says ‘filmmakers never cared for what they created’.