25,000 artefacts in this archive on Indian cinema

On the periphery of Tar deo's AC market, in a large office building, inside a climate-controlled vault, Raj Kapoor's Mitchell camera sits alongside KL Saigal's harmonium and PC Barua's stopwatch. This is the Film Heritage Foundation (FHF), set up in 2014, where conservationists restore film posters, censor certificates and old photographs wearing powder-free gloves that leave no fingerprints.Posters are stored in acid-free plastic jackets ­ imported from the US ­ while old film magazines are stacked in special cardboard boxes flown in from Italy. “Liquids aren't allowed here,“ says founder Shivendra Singh Dungarpur, “so even the hourly temperature and humidity reports are written in pencil.“
While directing `Celluloid Man', a film based on the life of archivist PK Nair, Dungarpur was struck by how little of India's cinema history was preserved. “We made 1,700 silent films but only 5 complete films and 15 fragments remain,“ he says. “By the time the National Film Archive of India (NFAI) was set up in 1964, we had lost 70-80% of our heritage.“
This realization fed Dungarpur's desire to create a non-profit archive ­ parallel to the NFAI ­ that would preserve old movies, conduct film-restoration workshops and collect artefacts like posters, tickets and props. “A true archive doesn't have just a film but everything revolving around a filmmaker including his personal notes, scripts and belongings,“ he explains, using the analogy of a Gandhi museum, which might display his clothes, writings and books.
Today , the archive has over 25,000 artefacts spread across their premises in Tardeo and Navi Mumbai. This includes 3,500 posters, over 500 films and 8,000 song booklets, which in pre-IMDB days were treasured for their song lyrics, cast names and plot synopsis. Future plans include setting up a conservation centre, which will have an exhibitions space, a digitized catalogue and annual film festivals, lectures and workshops.
The collection was initially drawn from Dungarpur's personal archive but has grown because of donations from filmy families.That's how they got hold of singer KL Saigal's tabla, harmonium and Urdu `shahiris', scrawled on the back of train tickets when he was still an employee with the Indian Railways. And the archive is still growing. Every day , film posters, newspapers and magazine articles get added to the collection along with advertisements of new film releases in the `Bombay Times'.
During our visit, trained paper conservationists were busy restoring PK Nair's personal notes and Dungarpur demonstrated how cuts in the `Duplicate' trailer had been restored on film turntables.Currently , FHF has a staff of six and an advisory council that includes Jaya Bachchan and Gulzar. In 2015, they also became members of the International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF).
Despite the treasure trove of film memorabilia on their premises including Satyajit Ray's poster collection and the camera used to shoot `Awaara' and `Shree 420', valuing these artefacts for insurance agencies remains problematic. “I may think a KL Sehgal harmonium is worth a million dollars but someone else will think otherwise,“ explains Dungarpur's wife, Teesha Cherian. And Dungarpur himself avoids making value judgments because for an archivist Govinda's shirt and Saigal's tabla are equally important. “Every object watched by viewers at a particular time has value,“ he says.
But he does admit to having a favourite ­ PC Barua's stopwatch. It was bought by the director to time the dialogues in the 1936-version of `Devdas', he explains. Playback had just been introduced so the director needed to time each shot before it was dubbed, he adds. Barua's son ­ named Dev after `Devdas' ­ gave the watch to Dungarpur before he died. “I value it a lot because it was a very personal gift,“ he says.