{"id":2206,"date":"2015-09-15T12:18:47","date_gmt":"2015-09-15T06:48:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/?p=2206"},"modified":"2015-09-15T16:45:15","modified_gmt":"2015-09-15T11:15:15","slug":"indias-vanishing-films","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/indias-vanishing-films\/","title":{"rendered":"India&#8217;s Vanishing Films Need Urgent Policies to Avoid a Bleak Future"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_2207\" style=\"width: 710px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2207\" class=\"size-full wp-image-2207\" src=\"http:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2015\/09\/Thousands-of-feet-of-celluloid-stripped.jpg\" alt=\"Thousands of feet of celluloid stripped\" width=\"700\" height=\"381\" srcset=\"https:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2015\/09\/Thousands-of-feet-of-celluloid-stripped.jpg 700w, https:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2015\/09\/Thousands-of-feet-of-celluloid-stripped-150x82.jpg 150w, https:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2015\/09\/Thousands-of-feet-of-celluloid-stripped-400x218.jpg 400w, https:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2015\/09\/Thousands-of-feet-of-celluloid-stripped-300x163.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-2207\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Thousands of feet of celluloid stripped<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Consider this:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>1000 kg of film is stripped in one go, which means 50 films stripped bare to extract three kilograms of silver, in a ramshackle workshop in Pathanwadi, in the slums of suburban Mumbai. The silver scavenger who goes by the name Bipin \u201cSilver\u201d has been doing this for the last 40 years.<\/li>\n<li>Raja Harishchandra, Dada Saheb Phalke\u2019s 3,700 feet 4-reel film, which was advertised as \u201ca performance of 57,000 photographs. A picture two miles long. All for three annas\u201d has only a mile of it surviving \u2013 reels 1 and 4.<\/li>\n<li>India has lost 90 percent of our silent films.\u00a01700 silent films were made in India, of which the National Film Archive of India (NFAI) has only 5-6 complete films and 10-12 films in fragments.<\/li>\n<li>Madras film industry made 124 films and 38 documentaries of which only one film <em>Marthanda Varma<\/em> (1931) survives.<\/li>\n<li><em>Jamai Babu<\/em> is the only surviving Bengali silent film.<\/li>\n<li>By 1950, India had lost 70-80 percent of its films.<\/li>\n<li>NFAI, the only official Indian archive, has only about 6,000 Indian films in its collection.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>These mind-bending figures were shared in an exhaustive and revealing presentation and lecture &#8220;The Future of Indian Cinema&#8217;s Past: Film Preservation and Restoration\u201d at The School\u00a0of\u00a0Arts\u00a0and\u00a0Aesthetics (SAA), Jawaharlal Nehru University by Shivendra Singh Dungarpur, filmmaker, archivist and restorer and the founder-director of the Film Heritage Foundation. \u201cCinema is the reflection of who we are and where we came from,\u201d Dungarpur said, adding, \u201cOne can only imagine the colossal loss of our rich film heritage.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Elaborating on why films are lost or damaged beyond repair, Dungarpur said, the main reasons were:<\/p>\n<p><strong>Destroyed by fire<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Early nitrate films were inflammable and could spontaneously combust in vaults and studios and even during projection. Most film stock, until 1951, used cellulose nitrate as the film base. Commonly known as gun cotton, cellulose nitrate or nitrocellulose was a known explosive.<\/p>\n<p>* Raja Harishchandra\u2019s last surviving print was consumed by a fire, forcing Phalke to reshoot the film in 1917 and what we see today is the second version.<\/p>\n<p>* B N Sircar\u2019s New Theatres\u2019 Studio battled a fire breakout in the Second World War that took with it many original negatives of the classic New Theatres\u2019 films of the 1930s. Sircar, unlike many of his contemporaries understood the importance of preservation and worked hard to collect prints from distributors to salvage some of those films.<\/p>\n<p>* Almost 150 films of the 1930s and 1940s, many of them box-office hits, including K L Saigal\u2019s debut film for the Bombay film industry <em>Bhakt Surdas<\/em> (1942) succumbed to a devastating fire in Ranjit Movietone warehouse in Bombay, in the late 1940s.<\/p>\n<p>* Original camera negatives and prints of 45 films were destroyed in a fire in the vaults of the erstwhile Prabhat Studios at the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), Pune, in 2002. Some of the original nitrate material that Mr. P.K. Nair had collected from the Phalke family, and some important films of Prabhat Films went up in flames.<\/p>\n<p>* As recently as July 2014, there was a fire at the office of the Bombay Talkies studio at Borivli that reduced the prints of several classic Indian films to ashes.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Stripped of silver<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Silver was extracted from nitrate films, leaving them white and barren as nitrate film base has higher silver content than other film bases.\u00a0Even classic films were sold by their producers and distributors for silver.<\/p>\n<p>One of the most famous films to have met this tragic fate is the Ardeshir Irani-directed <em>Alam Ara \/ The Ornament of the World<\/em> (1931), India\u2019s first talkie. Dungarpur played a clip from <em>Celluloid Man<\/em> where P K Nair recounted the incident when he had approached Ardeshir Irani to persuade him to archive <em>Alam Ara<\/em>. Irani had agreed asking him to take away the few cans lying in his office. Later Irani\u2019s son Sapurji had confessed to Nair that he had sold the film for silver long ago without his father\u2019s knowledge. All that remained of <em>Alam Ara<\/em> were a few empty cans and the dilapidated Jyoti Studio where it had been shot, a mute testimony to a lost legacy.<\/p>\n<p>Just like black and white film stock is stripped for silver, colour film can also be melted and re-moulded into coloured bangles or maintained in a liquefied state to be used as coloured dyes. In Maharashtra for instance, this has resulted in the development of an entire informal industry producing coloured bangles, ladies\u2019 handbags, wallets, etc.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Victims of adverse climatic conditions<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>All three main film producing centres \u2013 Bombay, Madras and Calcutta were colonial port cities with high heat and humidity levels that were extremely damaging to nitrate films. With no proper storage facilities, films were stored in labs or warehouses, where the adverse climatic conditions ate into them.<\/p>\n<p>Producers typically paid an annual deposit fees to a lab to keep the original camera negative. If the film was not successful and the producers stopped paying, the labs would send the prints away to old warehouses where they would be forgotten and left to decay.<\/p>\n<p>Even families of filmmakers did not take adequate care of their classics. Recounting one such incident of \u201cheartbreak\u201d Dungarpur said that when he had learnt that he could get access to the original camera negative of Debaki Bose\u2019s <em>Ratnadeep \/ The Jewelled Lamp<\/em> (1951) and had rushed to his son\u2019s house in Kolkata, he was dismayed to have found that the cans containing the negatives had been left in the open. The jammed and rusted cans could be opened only after much effort but the brittle negatives in them could not be saved.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Unwitting archivists<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Interestingly, some films have found their way to NFAI by default rather than by design, with the Indian Railways playing an unwitting archivist. Explaining this, Dungarpur said, \u201cOften, after a film had had its run at the box office, producers found themselves with several prints in hand. Not knowing what to do with them, they put them onto trains with no destination marked on them. They knew that if the prints were unclaimed, it would be the Indian Railways\u2019 legal responsibility to deal with them. This is how thousands of cans have found their way to the NFAI, courtesy of the railways.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>P K Nair\u2019s yeoman service to archiving Indian cinema lies in his dedicated and steadfast work through his 27-year-long career with the NFAI, building up the archives \u201ccan by can\u201d. Then there was the late Abdul Ali of Cine Society, an unsung archivist, who single-handedly helped NFAI in retrieving over 350 films from warehouses across the country, including <em>Achchut Kanya \/ Untouchable Maiden<\/em> (1936) and <em>Izzat<\/em> (1937), both directed by Franz Osten and <em>Mahal<\/em> (1949), the iconic film directed by Kamal Amrohi.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_2208\" style=\"width: 710px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2208\" class=\"size-full wp-image-2208\" src=\"http:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2015\/09\/Films-sold-by-the-kilo.jpg\" alt=\"Films sold by the kilo at 'Chor Bazar' in Mumbai.\" width=\"700\" height=\"379\" srcset=\"https:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2015\/09\/Films-sold-by-the-kilo.jpg 700w, https:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2015\/09\/Films-sold-by-the-kilo-400x217.jpg 400w, https:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2015\/09\/Films-sold-by-the-kilo-300x162.jpg 300w, https:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2015\/09\/Films-sold-by-the-kilo-150x81.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-2208\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Films sold by the kilo at &#8216;Chor Bazar&#8217; in Mumbai.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Some of the shopkeepers in one of India\u2019s largest flea market, the \u2018Chor Bazaar\u2019 in Mumbai, double up as guardians of film heritage as they have been stocking rare memorabilia and film-related artefacts for generations. Dungarpur revealed that he had acquired the original camera negative of the Guru Dutt-starrer <em>Bharosa<\/em> (1963) that had been discarded by a lab. \u201cFilms are sold here by length and weight: 8mm films for Rs. 300 a reel, entire films on 16mm for Rs.4000 and 35mm films for Rs.100 a kilo,\u201d said Dungarpur.<\/p>\n<p>A film may be viewed different at different points of time. <em>Kaagaz Ke Phool<\/em> (1959), Guru Dutt\u2019s bold attempt to introduce cinemascope in Indian films, did not enjoy box-office success when released initially. In the eighties, the film became a regular view at film societies and there was a renewed interest in it. Today, it is considered a classic of Indian cinema.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #c2150a;\"><strong>Restoration Test 2014 &#8211; <em>Kaagaz Ke Phool<\/em><\/strong><\/span> from FHF<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/104489183\" width=\"600\" height=\"338\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>Life span of media matters<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Film making has undergone radical changes in technology. The erstwhile celluloid film and the soft whirring\u00a0sound of the projector has now made way for the digital format. Hence, along with the making of new cinema, the digital era has brought about pathbreaking innovations in technology which is helping restore films to see them the way they would have been on the day they were released.<\/p>\n<p>Interestingly, celluloid outlives all other formats according to the \u2018Life Span of Different Media\u2019 statistics that Dungarpur presented:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>CD\/DVD \u2013 3-5 years<\/li>\n<li>Hard disk \u2013 6 years<\/li>\n<li>LTO (Linear Tape-Open) \u2013 30 years<\/li>\n<li>Magnetic Storage Media \u2013 30-50 years<\/li>\n<li>Celluloid film \u2013 126 years and counting\u2026<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\u201cPeople are now talking about the death of celluloid. This is a very emotional topic for me as I grew up watching films on celluloid with the sound of the projector, the flicker, the smell of the film. While I have to accept the reality, I will continue to shoot on celluloid as long as I can,\u201d said Dungarpur.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Restoration of the Apu Trilogy<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Two decades after its original negatives were burned in a fire, Satyajit Ray\u2019s breathtaking milestone of world cinema <em>The Apu Trilogy <\/em>(comprising the three films <em>Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road), Aparajito (The Unvanquished),<\/em> and\u00a0<em>Apur Sansar (The World of Apu)<\/em>) has got a fresh and new lease of life\u00a0in a meticulously reconstructed new 4K restoration by made by the Criterion Collection in collaboration with the Academy Film Archive at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The restoration has taken\u00a0several\u00a0years as each and every frame that was burnt, damaged or torn diagonally from the middle was worked upon to be brought to the original state, the way Ray had filmed it.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #c2150a;\"><strong>Apu Trilogy Restoration Trailer<\/strong><\/span> from Criterion Collection<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/126427207\" width=\"600\" height=\"337\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Restoration involves complex and exacting processes including research, selection, physical repair, cleaning and various photochemical and digital techniques for repairing the image and creating new materials.<\/p>\n<p>The challenges were many. It was difficult to figure what might have been the original Ray film when compared to other prints that FIAF (International Federation of Film Archives)\u00a0acquired from various sources (FHF is an associated member of the FIAF). Each print had some differences. Sandip Ray and Andrew Robinson (the author of the celebrated Ray biography <em>\u2018The Inner Eye\u2019<\/em>) were roped in to help identify the finer nuances of the original negatives. The idea of restoration is to keep the original colours, hues and artistry intact, emphasized Dungarpur.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The sound challenge <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Another great challenge is restoring the sound in the film. The sound strip is embedded in the left side of the frame which typically faces upwards when the film reel is kept in the can and hence is vulnerable to maximum damage. To retrieve the sound, one has to go back to the original magnetic source and also one has to keep in mind how the sound would have been recorded originally, to retain the quality of the recording in those times.<\/p>\n<p>Due to extensive damage to the original negatives, in some films the sound could not be restored at all, such as India\u2019s first Konkani film <em>Mogacho Aunddo \/ Love\u2019s Craving<\/em> (1950). When Dungarpur had been given this film by National Award-winning filmmaker Bardroy Barretto and he found that the reel was brittle, scratched and had fungus on it and had become hardened over the decades, he had sent it to L\u2019Immagine Ritrovata, a laboratory in Bologna, which does world-class, full-fledged film restoration.<\/p>\n<p>After reading Martin Scorsese\u2019s interview about Bologna in 2010, Dungarpur had decided to visit the place and that had sparked the idea for the FHF. The association led to a deeper collaboration with Scorsese and his non-profit organisation, The Film Foundation and World Cinema Foundation, to restore Uday Shankar\u2019s film, <em>Kalpana<\/em> (1948) and Dungarpur had worked hard to acquire the copy of the original negative preserved by the NFAI and send it to Bologna.\u00a0<em>Kalpana <\/em>enjoyed a world premiere at the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.festival-cannes.fr\/en\/article\/58952.html\">Cannes Classics 2012<\/a> programme which showcases restored prints of classic films and masterpieces of film history.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #c2150a;\"><strong>Kalpana &#8211; Before and After Restoration<\/strong><\/span> from FHF<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/102913615\" width=\"600\" height=\"441\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>Film industry turning\u00a0\u201cit\u2019s back on celluloid\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Speaking about the urgent and crying need for preserving and restoring our films that rapidly plunging towards irreparable loss, Dungarpur said that of the ten different film industries in India, producing the largest number of films, with the South Indian film industry accounting for 60 percent of films produced. But the industry megastars have not done anything for the cause of preserving our cinematic history, despite their political clout. The industry too is making a pronounced drift towards digital technology, turning \u201cit\u2019s back on celluloid\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis arises from the widespread ignorance of the importance of these originals among filmmakers, copyright holders and industry stakeholders. Labs are shutting down all over the country and throwing films on the scrapheap \u2013 the producers are not interested in taking charge of them. None of the Indian laboratories engaged in film restoration has photochemical facilities. Producers, copyright holders and the public at large are quite satisfied with basic low-cost digital restoration, poor quality DVDs and accessing films on YouTube. There is a general lack of understanding that a full-fledged film restoration goes beyond just digital scanning and cleaning,\u201d emphasized Dungarpur.<\/p>\n<p>The task of restoration is clearly laid out and challenging. Repairing the original camera negative should be the primary criterion. One has to study the film, its making, the year it was made, the crew and the intention behind the film \u2013 the information has to be gathered from all film and non-film related sources. \u201cWe must know the story of that film to be able to work on it\u2026 Every element has to be back to its original creation,\u201d added Dungarpur.<\/p>\n<p><strong>&#8216;We&#8217;ve not even started&#8217;<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The presentation was followed by a panel discussion anchored by Ira Bhaskar, Professor, Cinema Studies and Dean, SAA. Ashish Rajyadhaksha, the author of <em>Encyclopedia of Indian Cinema<\/em> and the seminal book on the legendary director <em>Ritwik Ghatak: A Return to the Epic <\/em>observed that the kind of attention being paid to the <em>Apu Trilogy<\/em> and <em>Kalpana<\/em> cannot be given to thousands of other films. This scale of restoration cannot happen en masse. The government on its part cannot and will not take up such a task.<\/p>\n<p>Agreeing with Rajyadhaksha, Dungarpur pointed out that not a single full-fledged restoration of a film has happened in India till date. \u201cWe have not even started,\u201d he rued. The film fraternity has not woken up to the need for restoration and the families of the legendary filmmakers who hold the copyright to the films are not keen either.<\/p>\n<p>Besides, India has just one film archive, the NFAI, which is designated still as a government media unit. Short on funding and skilled staff, the NFAI is ill-equipped to handle the mammoth task of preserving the rich and diverse cinematic heritage of the country. Emphasizing on the need for decentralizing the system, Dungarpur said, \u201cEach film industry in the country should have its own regional archive with a mandatory acquisition policy. Film storage facilities should be improved, expanded and optimised: saving original source materials is of utmost importance. But preservation is just the first step. A detailed inventory and classification of the films in the archives is essential to facilitate public access for reference and research.\u201d<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_2210\" style=\"width: 708px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2210\" class=\"size-full wp-image-2210\" src=\"http:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2015\/09\/A-silent-film-of-India.jpg\" alt=\"A silent film of India\" width=\"698\" height=\"494\" srcset=\"https:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2015\/09\/A-silent-film-of-India.jpg 698w, https:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2015\/09\/A-silent-film-of-India-400x283.jpg 400w, https:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2015\/09\/A-silent-film-of-India-300x212.jpg 300w, https:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2015\/09\/A-silent-film-of-India-150x106.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 698px) 100vw, 698px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-2210\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">A still from a silent film &#8211; not a single full-fledged restoration of a film has happened in India till date.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Sudhir Kapur, the music connoisseur whose grip on the subtleties of Hindi film music are well known\u00a0 through his critical work in archiving songs on <em>AtulSongADay<\/em> and digitizing the <em>Hindi Film Geet Kosh<\/em>, threw light on the huge lot of material still available which has been converted into digital form and turned into DVDs.\u00a0 \u201cThere has to be some sort of an archive that would at least host and preserve those collections also,\u201d he emphasized to which Dungarpur agreed.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Policy perspective needed to recognise cinema as national\u00a0heritage<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Speaking to this author after the session, Sudhir\u00a0said, \u201cThe neglect towards preserving our film heritage has been paramount. It is basically a shared inaction that the government and the industry both must be blamed for.\u00a0 The industry has not been looking at this as a heritage of its own. For them it should be the most important thing.\u00a0 But they are not in that mode at all.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Referring to the examples that were given about film preservation and restoration in the USA and UK, Sudhir\u00a0said, \u201cThey have been preserving everything right from the beginning. In the UK, the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bfi.org.uk\/archive-collections\" target=\"_blank\">BFI <\/a>as far back as 1938, had got everything they required in place and beyond that it was just a process to be completed. In India we do not have any such thing.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe main problem which Shivendra also mentioned is that the government does not have a policy on this. The recognition of this whole material as a national treasure and a national heritage and its archiving has to happen from a policy perspective. And that policy must be implemented,\u201d Sudhir\u00a0said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGiven the current restoration process that Shivendra is going through, it is completely mind-boggling to even imagine that he will be able to restore everything of what is available, forget about what he still has to trace.\u00a0 That is not possible. Funding for that cannot be made available, unless of course the industry steps in and a cultural philanthropy type of activity happens. In that sense, I can empathise with Shivendra that he will try and restore and films that are most important. Hence, he is going after Bimal Roy and Satyajit Ray and Ghatak, and that is understandable from that perspective,\u201d Sudhir\u00a0added.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_2209\" style=\"width: 564px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2209\" class=\"size-full wp-image-2209\" src=\"http:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2015\/09\/The-Golden-50s-poster.jpg\" alt=\"The Golden \u201850s: India\u2019s Endangered Classics\" width=\"554\" height=\"792\" srcset=\"https:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2015\/09\/The-Golden-50s-poster.jpg 554w, https:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2015\/09\/The-Golden-50s-poster-280x400.jpg 280w, https:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2015\/09\/The-Golden-50s-poster-300x429.jpg 300w, https:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2015\/09\/The-Golden-50s-poster-150x214.jpg 150w, https:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2015\/09\/The-Golden-50s-poster-105x150.jpg 105w, https:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2015\/09\/The-Golden-50s-poster-210x300.jpg 210w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 554px) 100vw, 554px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-2209\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Golden \u201850s: India\u2019s Endangered Classics<\/p><\/div>\n<p><span style=\"color: #c2150a;\"><em>Pictures used in this article are courtesy Film Heritage Foundation<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>More to read<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/60-years-of-pather-panchali\/\">60 Years of Pather Panchali and Some Questions on Indian Cinema<\/a><\/strong><br \/>\n<strong><a href=\"http:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/salaam-cinema-tribute-indian-legends\/\">Salaam Cinema \u2013 An Extraordinary Tribute<\/a><\/strong><br \/>\n<strong><a href=\"http:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/osians-auction-film-memorabilia\/\">History, Rare Heritage Stars Of Osian\u2019s Film Memorabilia Auction<\/a><\/strong><br \/>\n<strong><a href=\"http:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/bollywood-in-posters-smm-ausaja\/\">Bollywood In Posters: 25-Year-Long Journey With Film Memorabilia<\/a><\/strong> <\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Destroyed by nitrate fires, stripped bare of silver, decaying in locked cans in hot and humid, unfavourable weather conditions or sold by the kilo in flea markets, the films of India, including the classics are meeting a tragic fate.  Shivendra Singh Dungarpur, founder of Film Heritage Foundation highlighted the critical lack of preservation and restoration initiatives in India, emphasizing urgent need for policy framework and awareness.<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":2207,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[792],"tags":[1372,1381,1371,1370,1369,1376,1379,1383,1377,1378,28,1373,1374,1380,1375,1382],"class_list":["post-2206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-critique-on-films","tag-apu-trilogy-restoration","tag-classic-films-lost","tag-criterion-collection","tag-fhf","tag-film-heritage-foundation","tag-hindi-film-geet-kosh","tag-indian-films-lost","tag-kalpana-restoration","tag-preservation-of-films","tag-restoration-of-indian-films","tag-satyajit-ray","tag-shivendra-singh-dungarpur","tag-silent-films","tag-silent-films-lost","tag-sudhir-kapur","tag-uday-shankars-kalpana"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2206","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2206"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2206\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}