Last May, filmmaker, archiver and restorer, Shivendra Singh Dungarpur got an SOS call from Bipin, a kabariwala (scrap dealer) in Goregaon. “I have something, come have a look,“ he urged. Dungarpur rushed across and was surprised with the Original Camera Negative (OCN) of a long-forgotten film, Bharosa.

Directed by K Shankar, this was one of the two Southern productions Guru Dutt had acted in 1963 (the other being T Prakash Rao's Bahurani).

Bharosa was a trite, melodramatic tale of a rich man's son brought up as a menial by his guardian who splurges the money he's been given to make a doctor of his own son. It co-starred Asha Parekh as his gaon ki gori, Mehmood who went by the name Platform MPPS, 'Double Roti' Shubha Khote in a double role and Kanhialal as the wily friend-turned-fraudster. The film is miles away from the classics Guru Dutt produced and directed, like Pyaasa, Chaundvin Ka Chand and Kagaz Ke Phool. So not many were bothered when Bharosa was lost to subsequent cine aficionados. But for Dungarpur who had seen the film while working on the script of a Guru Dutt biopic with Anurag Kashyap a few years ago, it was quite a find. The biopic was never made and Bharosa too slipped away from Dungarpur's memory till Bipin's call.

“The OCN is the starting point of a film. Today, we often have to work with dupe negatives because the OCN of several old films, including Pyaasa, is lost to us. Several labs have shut shop and thrown away the negatives which is perhaps how this one landed up as scrap. Given where it was found, it was in pretty good condition. We've cleaned it up and now it's a part of the Foundation,“ says Dungarpur who set up a non-profit organisation, Film Heritage Foundation, last year. The organisation is dedicated to supporting the conservation, preservation and restoration of the moving image.

Starting February 22, the Foundation in collaboration with Martin Scorsese's Film Foundation, Cineteca di Bologna and L'Immagine Ritrovata will host a week-long school at Mumbai's Film Division. Through lectures and screening it will address issues related to film preservation and restoration and train participants in restoration practices. “For me our films are the cultural heritage many of us have grown up on. We can't let history get away from us,“ he asserts.