Showing posts with label P K Nair. Show all posts
Showing posts with label P K Nair. Show all posts
Films, esp those on celluloid, need to be saved; There were no trained archivists to take over NFAI after P K Nair-Shivendra Singh Dungarpur
4:29 PM
Filmmaker Shivendra Singh Dungarpur started his Film Heritage Foundation in 2014, which has since introduced over 150 individuals to the highly specialised world of film preservation. He talks to Mohua Chatterjee about the shortage of trained archivists in India and how to fix it
Mohua Chatterjee (THE TIMES OF INDIA; November 2, 2018)
Why did you think of taking up preserving films when the National Film Archive of India (NFAI) is there for the purpose?
Countries like France, Italy, Germany, the UK and US to name a few, have several film archives for preservation of their moving image heritage and very few of these archives are run by government or are dependent solely on government funds. India has an over 100-year-old film history and we are the most prolific film industry in the world, besides being one of the most diverse. It would be impossible for a single archive to preserve even a fraction of the best films that we produce.
Film preservation is a highly specialized field that requires trained archivists. NFAI was run by P K Nair, for whom it was a passionate obsession, but he was one of a kind. There were no trained archivists or curators to take over after him.
My decision to establish Film Heritage Foundation, a non-government organisation, was an outcome of discussions with the film industry as we felt we should start our own movement, rather than wait for government to do all the work. Many more film archives and public-private partnerships have to be encouraged if we are to safeguard our films.
How many films have you preserved and how do you store them?
Currently we have a growing film collection of about 300 titles on 35mm, 16mm and 8mm formats that is preserved in a temperature-controlled storage facility. We maintain films of leading personalities like Amitabh Bachchan, Shyam Benegal, N N Sippy, Mani Ratnam, Kumar Shahani, Govind Nihalani, Chitra Palekar, Onir, Shaad Ali, Sumitra Bhave, Sunil Sukthankar among others. The films are periodically checked, cleaned and repaired with inspection reports on their condition.
Every day we get a call asking for help to rescue films. Recently I was invited by the Odisha State Archives to look at their collection and advise them. We found hundreds of films, some very important ones, lying abandoned and in urgent need of preservation. This is why advocacy is a priority for our foundation as we try to reach out to different parts of the country to spread the word that films, and especially those on celluloid, need to be saved.
Tell us about your documentary film Celluloid Man?
I always had an interest in preservation – something that I learnt from my father. I had read an interview with Martin Scorsese about the Il Cinema Ritrovato festival in Bologna, Italy where they screened restored films. I was fascinated by this and attended the festival.
On my return from Bologna, I went to meet P K Nair in Pune for whom building the collection of the NFAI had been a single-minded purpose. This meeting brought back all the old memories of the time I spent at Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) when Nair saheb had shown us so many wonderful films. Thanks to him we began to love and live for films.
So Celluloid Man was really an organic process. It was a journey of discovery. Nair saheb had an encyclopaedic memory not just of the films in the Archive, but of all the films he had seen in his lifetime.
The history of Indian cinema as well as the terrible loss of this heritage unfolded over many hours and days of conversations with Nair sahib, and is captured in Celluloid Man. But I realised that to really make a change, I couldn’t stop with the film, which was just the first step and gave birth to the foundation in a sense.
As for your seven-hour film on Jiri Menzel, you may get international festival acclaim but how will you show it to regular audiences?
I make films based on what I feel at the moment and what inspires me. It is not about indulgence or need. Why should there be an ending? This film has been a labour of love that has been eight years in the making. It took me almost a year of phone calls and emails to convince Menzel to meet me in a cafe in Prague in 2010. And so began a conversation and a friendship that has culminated in a seven-hour film that not only explores the deceptively whimsical comic films of Menzel, but also discovers the fascinating world of the Czechoslovak New Wave. This was a movement peopled by brilliant artists paradoxically making films funded by an oppressive regime, beautifully disguising their subversiveness through humour and artistry.
I would like to show it to general audiences. I firmly believe that we should not underestimate our audiences. The journey of this film has just begun and I hope that it will find its own audience.
My film with Shruti Haasan will go on floors this April-Kamal Haasan
7:51 AM
The veteran actor-filmmaker's next, a trilingual Hindi-Tamil-Telugu comedy-thriller, will roll this April
Avinash Lohana (MUMBAI MIRROR; March 7, 2016)
Mirror was the first to
report about Kamal Haasan's Bollywood comeback with Amar Hain (June 4),
which he was to direct and act in. Now, we hear the film is off the
shelf. “It was a multi-starrer and kept getting delayed as people wanted
to know more about the story. They might have had plenty of time on
their hands, I didn't. So I decided to move on,“ is the curt response
from the actor-director whose comeback plan has now taken a detour of
sorts.
Haasan's next, a Hindi-Tamil-Telugu trilingual comedy-thriller, will see him share screen space with actress-daughter Shruti for the first time after she appeared in a cameo in his 2000 film, Hey Ram. The duo plays father-daughter with Paresh Rawal in a significant role. “It will go on the floor this April and will be directed by T K Rajeev Kumar,“ the 61-year-old veteran reveals, adding that his firstborn is a big star down South and his production house, like many others, has been queuing up for her dates.
What about Shruti's younger sister Akshara who made her acting debut in Amitabh Bachchan and Dhanush starrer Shamitabh? “She has just started out so it would be unfair to scrutinise her career. I am proud that both my daughters have created a niche for themselves without using my name,“ he says. Haasan was the guest of honour at the second edition of Film Preservation and Restoration work shop at the National Film Archives of India in Pune on Sunday. Praising the initiative to preserve Indian celluloid classics, he remembers for mer NFAI director P K Nair who passed away on March 5. “He was a great man, a hero for many, including me,“ he says, reminiscing that it was Nair who often quenched his thirst for good cinema. “There weren't many platforms to watch good films before. When I wanted to watch one, he'd tell me where exactly I would find it.“
Haasan's next, a Hindi-Tamil-Telugu trilingual comedy-thriller, will see him share screen space with actress-daughter Shruti for the first time after she appeared in a cameo in his 2000 film, Hey Ram. The duo plays father-daughter with Paresh Rawal in a significant role. “It will go on the floor this April and will be directed by T K Rajeev Kumar,“ the 61-year-old veteran reveals, adding that his firstborn is a big star down South and his production house, like many others, has been queuing up for her dates.
What about Shruti's younger sister Akshara who made her acting debut in Amitabh Bachchan and Dhanush starrer Shamitabh? “She has just started out so it would be unfair to scrutinise her career. I am proud that both my daughters have created a niche for themselves without using my name,“ he says. Haasan was the guest of honour at the second edition of Film Preservation and Restoration work shop at the National Film Archives of India in Pune on Sunday. Praising the initiative to preserve Indian celluloid classics, he remembers for mer NFAI director P K Nair who passed away on March 5. “He was a great man, a hero for many, including me,“ he says, reminiscing that it was Nair who often quenched his thirst for good cinema. “There weren't many platforms to watch good films before. When I wanted to watch one, he'd tell me where exactly I would find it.“
Adieu P K Nair, India's Celluloid Man
7:34 AM
Shivendra Singh Dungarpur who made the 2012 documentary on PK Nair, remembers the late film archivist
MUMBAI MIRROR (March 5, 2016)
A 10-day Film Preservation and Restoration Workshop organised by the
National Film Archive of India (NFAI) in collaboration with Film
Heritage Foundation and International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF)
kicked off at the NFAI, Pune, on February 26, to provide training to
help preserve India's cinematic heritage. In my opening speech, I
dedicated the workshop to Nair saab because, for perhaps the first time,
he was not attending the programme even though he so wanted to. It
would have been his last workshop before he retired and returned to
Kerala after influencing a whole generation of filmmakers, from Girish
Kasaravalli to Rajkumar Hirani, from Kumar Shahani and Arun Koppikar to
Sriram Raghavan, to love and live for films. But a few days before, he
had been rushed to the hospital and his son, Bikash, sent me a message
saying that when he was in the ICU, unconscious, he was murmuring,
"Where is the screen?" perhaps imagining himself in a projection room
watching a film. I remember Nair saab from the '90s when I was a student at the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), as a strict disciplinarian, a man of few words who you couldn't imagine befriending, sitting in a theatre watching film after film, jotting down details in a diary with the help of a small torch. It was an almost Hitchcockian image. Starting out as a librarian and a researcher at the Institute he went on to become the founder-director of the NFAI and the only man who knew which can held which scene or song of a film.
He was my spiritual father and inspired me as a filmmaker, but it was only when I was in Bologna for a festival at which I saw some restored black-and-white classics that I realised how big his contribution was. I stepped out of the plane with the idea of making a film on PK Nair, India's Celluloid Man, who lived for the cans of films and was passionate about Prabhat classics, be it Sant Tukaram or Duniya Na Mane. He would watch the latter on Steinbeck and tell me repeatedly to look at the sound. He taught me how to clean a film and how to preserve it. He took Dadasaheb Phalke's 1919 silent movie, Kaliya Mardan, featuring his daughter Mandakini, in bits and pieces, and put it together in the right sequence from the jottings in Phalke's diary. It's thanks to his efforts that Dilip Kumar could watch Mughal-e-Azam decades after its release, having skipped the premiere over a disagreement with K Asif.
He had this habit of randomly dialling a number from a phone directory and introducing himself as the NFAI director, asking the person at the other end if he/she would like to come and watch a movie with him. While many banged the phone on him, thinking he was crazy, some were intrigued enough to show up. After the screening, he'd engage them in a discussion about cinema.
I'd been anxious about his health these last few days, more so since I learnt that they had extracted 700 ml of fluid from his lungs. Yesterday, I was at a workshop when, at 11 am, I learnt that he had suffered a cardiac arrest. I broke down, remembering the screening of Celluloid Man I had held for him at Ad Labs. At the end of it he told me, "It's a very emotional moment for me Shivendra, thank you." I couldn't believe that this man, who has done so much for our cinematic heritage, was thanking me. I wish we could thank him for his lifelong contribution with a national honour, he certainly deserves a Padma Bhushan, even posthumously.
P K NAIR PASSES AWAY
P K Nair, founder-director of the Pune-based National Film Archive of India, passed away on Friday at a private hospital in the city. He was 82.
According to NFAI sources, he was admitted last week. The archivist dedicated his life to preservation of films and building its collection at the NFAI, and was instrumental in archiving several landmark Indian movies, including Dadasaheb Phalke's Kaliya Mardan and Raja Harishchandra, Bombay Talkies' films such as Jeevan Naiya, Bandhan, Kangan, Achhut Kanya and Kismet, S S Vasan's Chandralekha and Uday Shankar's Kalpana. Nair joined the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) in Pune as a research assistant in 1961, and played a key role in the setting up of the NFAI in 1964.
He was appointed assistant curator in 1965, and continued with the NFAI till 1991. By the time he retired as director, he had acquired a whopping 12,000 films for the archive. Of these, 8,000 were Indian and the rest foreign films.
------------------
P K Nair (1933-2016): Cinema's guardian angel no more
Film archivist PK Nair passed away on Friday, leaving behind an enviable legacy in cinema preservation
Shakti Shetty (MID-DAY; March 5, 2016)
If you haven’t watched the documentary Celluloid Man (2012) yet, you have missed out on something worthwhile. The subject of this film uses the phrase ‘bits and pieces’ repeatedly while talking about his work. Interestingly, he isn’t the only one doing that. Accomplished cinematic personalities like Shyam Benegal, Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Krzysztof Zanussi, Gulzar, Naseeruddin Shah, Mrinal Sen, Jahnu Barua, Girish Kasaravalli, Shabana Azmi, Vidhu Vinod Chopra — to name a few — have something to say not only about the protagonist of this film, but also how he influenced them. After all, he was once a collector of items long lost; not just in physicality but also in memory. Nonetheless, he was determined enough to do his precious bit for the neglected ones.
The person in question here is renowned film archivist and scholar Paramesh Krishnan Nair (fondly called P K Nair) and the work being referred to is preservation of old films — films that belong to the Silent era as well as the Talkies; films that are national as well as international in nature; films that barely made it to the present because nobody else in the past cared to preserve
the reels.
If it weren’t for his unbridled efforts, it would have been almost impossible to find an original copy of Dadasaheb Phalke’s Raja Harishchandra (1913) or Kaliya Mardan (1919) today. Or for that matter, classics like Jeevan Naiya (1936), Bandhan (1940), Kangan (1939), Achhut Kanya (1936) and Kismet (1943), SS Vasan’s Chandralekha and Uday Shankar’s Kalpana, both of which released in 1948. And these are just a few of the many films he managed to preserve.
The tragedy of losing innumerable cans of old films is now cascaded with the loss of the man dedicated to saving them. Nair passed away yesterday morning in Pune after being critically ill for 10 days. He was 82 and is survived by his son and daughter.
Born in 1933 in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, Nair’s interest in films developed at a young age. Determined to serve cinema, he joined National Film Archive of India (NFAI) in 1965 as assistant curator. Seventeen years later, in 1982, he became its director. It would be remiss to say that his tenure wasn’t without any controversy, given his ceaseless battle against the indifferent bureaucracy. However, by the time he retired in April 1991, he had collected over 12,000 films, of which 8,000 were of Indian origin.
Known for his reticence, Nair has left a resounding legacy in the world of cinema preservation. An effort that dates way before the likes of Martin Scorsese’s The Film Foundation came up. Contributions of the aptly nicknamed Celluloid Man to world cinema is extraordinary, to confer the least. But despite all these, chances are that you may never have heard of him. And that’s precisely what makes the aforementioned documentary a must-watch.
FTII 2009 batch was given priority over the 2008 batch-Resul Pookutty
8:20 AM
Resul Pookutty (THE TIMES OF INDIA; August 23, 2015)
I finished my diploma
course at the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) in
1995, within the stipulated three-year time frame. Up until 2000,
batches following mine too completed their course in time, give or take
small delays.
When I was studying at FTII, there were four disciplines--direction, camera, sound and editing--which could take 10 students each. So, in any given year, there were 120 students on the campus. But, around 1999, three more disciplines were added--production, acting and screenwriting. But, the infrastructure remained the same and soon, problems started.
In 1999, under the directorship of Mohan Agashe, the administration came up with a new course structure. Instead of a three-year course there would be three one-year courses. At the end of each year a student would have to reapply for specialization and they could be either eliminated from or elevated to next year. As per this decision, 80 students were to be admitted in that academic year (as against 32 students earlier). This was a seriously flawed decision and the idea of forced elimination of students was severely criticized. The old system was then reinstated within a year. The elimination process had half the number of students reaching the final year, but once it was removed, the entire batch was pushed up, adding 50% more students than planned. This even as the infrastructure remained the same.
The 2008 batch suffered the most for these decisions because by then, a huge backlog of delayed projects had built up. It was clear to the faculty in 2000 itself that the incoming batch of students would not be able to complete their studies in three years. The faculty and the administration knew the 2008 batch was in for delayed courses. Then how can the batch be blamed for the delay? The faculty recommended that 2008 be declared a zero year. The crucial seat of the head of the department of direction too had been lying vacant for three years. But at the ministry's instance, FTII announced admissions for 2008.
Around this time, the SC had asked FTII to implement the 27.5% OBC reservation without reducing the strength of the general category. So, in September 2008, 94 more students were added to the batch. The first year went of smoothly and then everything started falling apart. In late July 2009, swine flu forced the closure of the hostels and the institute.
This was followed by other disruptions. The International Students Film Festival was held to celebrate 100 years of Indian cinema, followed by the National Students Festival. In 2009, the government appointed the consultancy, Hewitt Associates, to recommend steps to upgrade FTII. Its report, which led to an uproar, was a barely disguised recommendation to privatize the institute. The government was forced to scrap this report. A new committee was appointed under the chairmanship of P K Nair, the former director of National Film Archives. Many famous alumni spent over a year analyzing various issues--the change from analogue to digital and possible ways to clear the academic backlog. This effort was made without any grant and everyone worked selflessly on it. But till date, the Nair committee report has not even been tabled.
The 2009 batch, whose classes started in January 2010, managed to complete the course by January 2015. This was made possible by giving it priority over the 2008 batch! No one knows the logic for this decision. In effect, the 2009 batch finished its course in five years pushing the 2008 batch to its seventh year. It is these students who suffered the most for FTII's reckless decisions, and also faced assessment and expulsion threats. This crisis spiraled into the gherao and the infamous midnight arrest.
FTII's core problem lies in the functioning of its director who holds all powers. He has to function not only as a guide but also as a mentor, rector, psychologist and mediator. But most FTII directors come from IAS or allied services and are not prepared to play these roles.
The biggest problem is that FTII is only a tiny blip on the I&B ministry's large radar. For them it's a media wing, not an academic institution. All the educational institutions under the I&B ministry account for less than 3% of its budget. The HRD ministry on the other hand understands how crucial teachers researchers and faculty are to an institution.
Early in the ongoing crisis, one of the senior-most I&B officials called me to discuss FTII's problem. A group of us had a four-hour meeting with the officials. A five-point agenda was submitted on the immediate steps that needed to be taken. The minister himself admitted to us that, “we haven't made the best of the choices, but as a government we cannot retract“. We were asked for recommendations to save the “face“ of the government. We were assured that all our recommendations would be implemented.
But nothing happened. We continued our dialogue and then Vidhu Vinod Chopra and Rajkumar Hirani too stepped in. Vinod even agreed to play the mentor at FTII. But the core issues that provoked the strike were not resolved. It took the ministry almost 45 days and a midnight arrest to send a panel to assess the situation.
The ministry wants the FTII to be a place of excellence and a proposal to this effect was also to be tabled in the monsoon session of Parliament. We now suggest a committee with the outgoing chairman and vice-chairman of the previous society and three other members chosen by the ministry to create guidelines for appointments and end this impasse.
The author is an alumni of FTII and an Oscar-winning sound designer
When I was studying at FTII, there were four disciplines--direction, camera, sound and editing--which could take 10 students each. So, in any given year, there were 120 students on the campus. But, around 1999, three more disciplines were added--production, acting and screenwriting. But, the infrastructure remained the same and soon, problems started.
In 1999, under the directorship of Mohan Agashe, the administration came up with a new course structure. Instead of a three-year course there would be three one-year courses. At the end of each year a student would have to reapply for specialization and they could be either eliminated from or elevated to next year. As per this decision, 80 students were to be admitted in that academic year (as against 32 students earlier). This was a seriously flawed decision and the idea of forced elimination of students was severely criticized. The old system was then reinstated within a year. The elimination process had half the number of students reaching the final year, but once it was removed, the entire batch was pushed up, adding 50% more students than planned. This even as the infrastructure remained the same.
The 2008 batch suffered the most for these decisions because by then, a huge backlog of delayed projects had built up. It was clear to the faculty in 2000 itself that the incoming batch of students would not be able to complete their studies in three years. The faculty and the administration knew the 2008 batch was in for delayed courses. Then how can the batch be blamed for the delay? The faculty recommended that 2008 be declared a zero year. The crucial seat of the head of the department of direction too had been lying vacant for three years. But at the ministry's instance, FTII announced admissions for 2008.
Around this time, the SC had asked FTII to implement the 27.5% OBC reservation without reducing the strength of the general category. So, in September 2008, 94 more students were added to the batch. The first year went of smoothly and then everything started falling apart. In late July 2009, swine flu forced the closure of the hostels and the institute.
This was followed by other disruptions. The International Students Film Festival was held to celebrate 100 years of Indian cinema, followed by the National Students Festival. In 2009, the government appointed the consultancy, Hewitt Associates, to recommend steps to upgrade FTII. Its report, which led to an uproar, was a barely disguised recommendation to privatize the institute. The government was forced to scrap this report. A new committee was appointed under the chairmanship of P K Nair, the former director of National Film Archives. Many famous alumni spent over a year analyzing various issues--the change from analogue to digital and possible ways to clear the academic backlog. This effort was made without any grant and everyone worked selflessly on it. But till date, the Nair committee report has not even been tabled.
The 2009 batch, whose classes started in January 2010, managed to complete the course by January 2015. This was made possible by giving it priority over the 2008 batch! No one knows the logic for this decision. In effect, the 2009 batch finished its course in five years pushing the 2008 batch to its seventh year. It is these students who suffered the most for FTII's reckless decisions, and also faced assessment and expulsion threats. This crisis spiraled into the gherao and the infamous midnight arrest.
FTII's core problem lies in the functioning of its director who holds all powers. He has to function not only as a guide but also as a mentor, rector, psychologist and mediator. But most FTII directors come from IAS or allied services and are not prepared to play these roles.
The biggest problem is that FTII is only a tiny blip on the I&B ministry's large radar. For them it's a media wing, not an academic institution. All the educational institutions under the I&B ministry account for less than 3% of its budget. The HRD ministry on the other hand understands how crucial teachers researchers and faculty are to an institution.
Early in the ongoing crisis, one of the senior-most I&B officials called me to discuss FTII's problem. A group of us had a four-hour meeting with the officials. A five-point agenda was submitted on the immediate steps that needed to be taken. The minister himself admitted to us that, “we haven't made the best of the choices, but as a government we cannot retract“. We were asked for recommendations to save the “face“ of the government. We were assured that all our recommendations would be implemented.
But nothing happened. We continued our dialogue and then Vidhu Vinod Chopra and Rajkumar Hirani too stepped in. Vinod even agreed to play the mentor at FTII. But the core issues that provoked the strike were not resolved. It took the ministry almost 45 days and a midnight arrest to send a panel to assess the situation.
The ministry wants the FTII to be a place of excellence and a proposal to this effect was also to be tabled in the monsoon session of Parliament. We now suggest a committee with the outgoing chairman and vice-chairman of the previous society and three other members chosen by the ministry to create guidelines for appointments and end this impasse.
The author is an alumni of FTII and an Oscar-winning sound designer
Film Heritage Foundation founded to restore vintage Bollywood classics
7:55 AM
Vickey Lalwani (MUMBAI MIRROR; May 28, 2014)
Alam Ara, the first Indian talkie that opened in 1931, is lost forever. In a bid to prevent other classics from meeting the same fate, Shivendra Singh Dungarpur, the director of the National Award winning Celluloid Man, has set up a Film Heritage Foundation.
Its other founding members include Indian filmmakers Shyam Benegal, Gulzar, Kumar Shahani and Girish Kasaravalli, Irish director Mark Cousins, Polish director Krzysztof Zanussi, founder director of the National Film Archives of India, P K Nair, director of an Italian film festival Gian Luca Farinelli and actress Jaya Bachchan. They will be a part of the advisory board which will select films to be restored.
Dungarpur told Mirror, "We want to save endangered films from yesteryears. They are our heritage. We have lost almost 80 per cent of the films made in India before 1950 which includes Alam Ara. It's terribly disturbing."
Dungarpur, who assisted Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Foundation in restoring Uday Shankar's Kalpana and the Sri Lankan film Nidhania, kicks off the restoration exercise from June 28 by showcasing films like Awara, Mother India, Kaagaz Ke Phool, Pyaasa, Madhumati, Do Bigha Zamin among many others at the Il Cinema Ritrovato Festival in Bologna, Italy.
"These are some of the films that are part of the 'endangered species' of cinema. They will be among the first to be restored. During this festival, we will create and spread awareness about them.
Furthermore, we will launch a nationwide campaign within the film industry inviting suggestions on which classics to save. We don't want any film to be forgotten," Dungarpur added.
Shyam Benegal lauded Dungarpur's effort and added that he was already meeting people, nationally and internationally, to put together the finances needed for the endeavour. "This is an exercise which requires a lot of commitment and we will work towards it. Films are a part of our culture and it is great to be a part of an organisation which is out to preserve our hard work," added Benegal.
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