Many old films were found among mounds of cans lying in the lanes of Mumbai, waiting to be stripped for silver or thrown away, says Shivendra Singh Dungarpur of Film Heritage Foundation
Niharika Lal (BOMBAY TIMES; March 3, 2023)

Recently, the Film Heritage Foundation rescued the reel of Dev Anand and Waheeda Rehman’s 1962 film Baat Ek Raat Ki from being sold to a scrap dealer for silver extraction. After we broke the story, it led to the foundation saving more old films, says filmmaker and director of FHF, Shivendra Singh Dungarpur.

These include the sound negative and 35 mm print of Gulzar’s Maachis (1996), the original picture and sound negatives of the 1967 film Chhoti Si Mulaqat – which was Bengali star Uttam Kumar’s first foray into Hindi cinema and which he also produced and co-starred in with Vyjayanthimala – and the original camera negative of the 1963 film Gul-e-Bakavali.

Dungarpur says that after the story of Dev Anand’s Baat Ek Raat Ki broke, he received a number of calls from across the country about the availability of old film reels. While most callers had copies, and not negatives, one such call led to the rescue of the reels of these old films.

Dungarpur says, “When we visited the area in Mumbai, we found mounds of film cans lying in the lanes of the suburbs, waiting to be stripped for silver or thrown in the dustbin. While finding and collecting films is challenging enough, the monumental task is storing them in proper conditions, preserving and restoring them so that they continue to have a life. It was shocking to see that some big production houses had discarded not just their films, but also their costumes and props in the scrap heap. We also found documentaries of the Films Division that had been discarded.”

Filmmakers Nikkhil Advani, Vikramaditya Motwane, Anurag Kashyap, Vasan Bala, Shakun Batra, Atul Sabharwal, Gaurav Chawla and cinematographer Swapnil Sonawane contributed to acquiring these films.

THE 9 FILMS RESCUED
- Gul-e-Bakavali (1963) (Hindi) by Jugal Kishore
- Aanchal Ka Phool (1968) (Hindi) by Karunesh Thakur
- Bat Ball (Hindi)
- Chhoti Si Mulaqat (1967) (Hindi) byAlo Sarkar
- Anokha (1975) (Hindi) and Do Khiladi(1976) (Hindi) by Jugal Kishore
- Pehla Kadam (1981) (Hindi) by Kidar Sharma
- O Khooni Darinda (1987) by DhirubhaiDaxini
- Maachis (1996) by Gulzar
- Long Da Lashkara (Punjabi) (1983) by Harpal Tiwana


Anokha (1975) by Jugal Kishore was among the films saved

A still from the film Gul-E-Bakavali (1963)