CONSERVAZIONE E RESTAURO DEI FILM INDIANI

Vi propongo integralmente l'articolo India has the world’s lowest survival rate of cinema. And this heritage needs attention, di C.S. Venkiteswaran, pubblicato oggi da The Hindu.

'Cinema might fire India’s imagination, but both imagination and passion fail when it comes to preserving the country’s rich cinematic legacy.

One of the most unorthodox directors to emerge during India’s parallel cinema movement in the 70s and 80s was G. Aravindan. With 18 films, seven national film awards, and a Padma Shri to his credit, he is rightly seen as a cinematic icon. Yet, appallingly, not one of the negatives of his films has survived. They are either lost or irreparably damaged. Finally, 30 years after his death, his film Kummatty (1979) has been restored and it premiered at the Cinema Ritrovato festival last month.

The restoration of Kummatty, hailed by Japan’s foremost film scholar and critic, Tadao Sato, as the most beautiful film he had ever seen, was done through an international collaboration, under the World Cinema Project initiated by Martin Scorsese’s The Film Foundation, the Film Heritage Foundation in India and the Cineteca di Bologna film archive in Italy.

In his book, The Death of Cinema, Paolo Cherchi-Usai refers to an article published in 1897 in which the life of a cinematograph frame is arithmetically worked out as ‘one-and-one-third seconds’. So, Usai says, it is the most ephemeral of things, whose life is even shorter than that of a firework, and he wonders whether film eventually exists only in the minds of its viewers. If so, physical preservation of film becomes secondary. Indian culture, with its penchant for concepts like maya and transience, seems to follow a similar attitude to cinema.

This is in spite of the fact that cinema, its images and sounds, stars, singers and stories inundate our everyday life and imagination. But when it comes to its preservation or archiving, attention and care are strikingly lacking. The National Film Archives of India (NFAI) was established in 1964 - a decade and a half after Independence - and whatever we have today in terms of the rich and varied legacy of the celluloid era of Indian cinema owes greatly to P.K. Nair, who headed the institution in its first decades (1965-1991). In his tenure, he collected over 12,000 films, of which 8,000 were Indian. Interestingly, Nair retired from the Archives when television was beginning to swamp the media scene and much before digital technologies changed the rules of the game.

The new technologies made preservation and storage of visual image easier and faster, and with significantly less spatial and infrastructural facilities. But has this actually given a boost to the quantum, quality and pace of film preservation, archiving and restoration in India?

According to Prakash Magdum, director of NFAI, “During the silent era, some 1,350 films were made in India, and only 30 survive now, and that too not in their complete form. It is to be noted that there is no legal deposit system in India that mandates the producer to keep one copy of the film at NFAI. Efforts are on to amend the Cinematograph Act, 1952, to bring in this provision, so that we can preserve the films cleared by the Central Board of Film Certification. NFAI currently has more than two lakh reels in its collection and we have managed to source more than 5,000 films in the last five years alone.”

Film historian and theorist Ashish Rajadhyaksha estimates the pure celluloid survivals at 8-10% of the films made. This is by far the lowest survival rate of cinema in the world, when compared to countries and industries of similar magnitude such as China (31%) and Argentina (30%). In other words, for governments, cinema has always only meant mass entertainment, one that needs to be curbed through censorship and leached through taxes.

South story

According to Theodore Baskaran, film scholar and historian of Tamil cinema, “Neither the government nor trade outfits took any initiative till the 1960s to preserve films. According to the Registration of Books Act of 1867, all published books have to be preserved in one of the national libraries. There was no such provision for films. It was only after half a century of filmmaking in India that the need to preserve films was felt.” Despite being a young art and of the print era, even written material on cinema is sparse. “If you look at the Tamil magazines of the 1920s and 1930s, you will hardly see any reference to cinema. They did not take any notice of the birth of a cultural colossus in their midst.”

Baskaran observes that, even from the first decade of Tamil talkies (1931-1941), when more than 240 films were made, only about 15 have survived. Interestingly, Marthanda Varma, made in 1931 (produced by Sunder Raj and directed by P.V. Rao), survived not due to any archival effort but for a legal imbroglio: after its initial screening, the film was confiscated following a copyright case filed by the publisher of the book on which the film was based. Decades later, in 1974, the film was salvaged from a book depot in Thiruvananthapuram; but only 7,915 out of the 11,905 feet of the film managed to survive.

This is how Shivendra Singh Dungarpur, who set up Film Heritage Foundation in 2014, traces the troubling statistics of our celluloid legacy: “Of the 1,338 silent films made in India, just 29 survive, many in fragments, some as short as 149 feet. Of the 124 films and 38 documentaries produced by the film industry in Chennai, only one film survives - Marthanda Varma (1931). By 1950, we had lost 70-80% of our films. This is excluding the numerous missing short films, animation films, television programmes, advertising commercials, home movies, etc., often forgotten in the shadow of the silver screen, but as important, and the fabric of our visual history.”

“There is something very wrong with the way we are taught to dismiss the art of seeing as something ephemeral and negligible,” said Martin Scorsese. But apart from the general apathy towards cinema as a vulgar mass art, unworthy of serious attention leave alone preservation and archiving, several other factors have contributed to the sad state of affairs. The sheer diversity, quantum and locations of production scattered across the country have proved to be a major hurdle.

On the scrap heap

The nature of the film stock itself was film’s worst enemy: its nitrate content was prone to rapid deterioration in tropical climates, and most film reels were scrapped and destroyed to salvage the silver content. After films completed their run in the theatres, they were forgotten and left to decay, or found their way to the scrap market. Many nitrate films were destroyed by fires at vaults, studios or even during projection. Even the more stable and non-inflammable cellulose acetate ‘safety films’ that came later are prone to decay if not stored in humidity- and temperature-controlled conditions.

While conscious, committed, institutional efforts to preserve films were slow to evolve, technological shifts helped to salvage them to a great extent. The advent of video technologies popularised the circulation of films through VHS cassettes, thus extending their lives. The advent of television spurred a new demand for old movies and, in turn, their transfer to video formats. The digital revolution that followed offered cheaper and easier storage formats like VCD and DVDs. Finally, the emergence of Internet platforms and sharing modes such as YouTube and torrents endlessly replicated whatever was left of films and made them available in the public domain. But the flip side of this quantum leap was the loss of quality and care for fidelity, leading to low-resolution reproductions and truncated versions.

According to Scorsese, the terms ‘preservation’ and ‘restoration’ are being indiscriminately appropriated by marketing experts “who know nothing about preservation itself but are aware of the economic potential of its public appeal. Many of the films made available today through electronic media are misleadingly hailed as ‘restored’, while nothing really has been done to enhance their chances to be brought to posterity.”

How to choose

Added to this is the problem of choosing which films to preserve. When there is a trade-off between the number of films and resources at hand, issues such as prioritisation, its criteria, agency, and timeline emerge. Even though FIAF’s (International Federation of Film Archives) 70th Anniversary Film Manifesto pleads, ‘Don’t Throw Away Film’ and considers every scrap of film as a visual document to be preserved for posterity, one can’t expect state institutions to be fired by such passion or inclusivity.

When priorities for preservation and restoration are set - like age, awards, critical acclaim, historical importance, and material condition - films that do not ‘qualify’ fall outside the scanner. In the process, works that were ‘ahead of their time’ may lose their only chance of survival. Political dispositions and biases of the state can also lead to ‘selective preservation’, which could relegate oppositional voices to oblivion. The essential precondition for proper restoration is the availability of the film material - good quality negatives or prints that are kept in temperature-controlled environments. Considering the number of films made in India, the facilities available are minuscule. As old technologies fade out, the basic production processes also disappear - for instance, the facilities for photochemical processes have become non-existent now. Added to this is the indifference of even the established production houses and banners towards preservation.

Even more tragic is the case of independent and experimental filmmakers. Most of their works were made on shoestring budgets raised through informal and personal sources of finance; they seldom had any established producer/ production house or even a permanent office address to follow up on the negatives kept in laboratories. Whenever there is pressure on storage space, or a shift in technology, the negatives and prints of these ‘orphaned’ films are the first casualty. As a result, the negatives of films of even the most eminent filmmakers in the country are not available for restoration.

New initiatives

One major initiative in the recent past is the establishment of the National Film Heritage Mission under NFAI that seeks to preserve, digitise and restore India’s cinematic heritage. The Mission has ambitious plans to conserve around 1,50,000 reels of film, digitise around 3,500 films and sound tracks, and restore around 2,000 landmark films. But the stupendous, costly and complex task of preserving India’s film heritage calls for more financial and technological resources, public-private partnerships, and curatorial synergies. It also requires coordinated and sustained involvement on the part of the film industry, film historians, curators and professional organisations in the field, and for international partnerships to bring in state-of-the-art know-how.

In recent decades, there have been a couple of significant initiatives in the non-state sector. One sterling instance is the independent digital repository Indiancine.ma that blends archival passion, historical perspective, and academic vision to create a very rich digital collection of Indian films. The other is Dungarpur’s Foundation. After Kummatty, the plan is to restore another Aravindan classic, Thampu, as well as Satyajit Ray’s Aranyer Din Ratri and Shyam Benegal’s Mandi.

But much more needs to be done. And it is a colossal task in a vast, vibrant and active film culture, where around 2,000 films are produced every year in as many as 45 languages. The diversity in centres of production, trade practices, platforms of exhibition, and modes of reception make the picture even more complex.

It is already too late, and if we don’t act right away, the most vibrant celluloid heritage in the world, and more importantly, one of the richest visual archives of our life, land and culture, will disappear forever'.

MOSTRA DEL CINEMA DI VENEZIA 2021

La 78esima Mostra del Cinema di Venezia si svolgerà dal primo all'11 settembre 2021. Once upon a time in Calcutta, pellicola in lingua bengali diretta da Aditya Vikram Sengupta, è in concorso nella sezione Orizzonti. Gli attori Sreelekha Mitra e Arindam Ghosh sono attesi al festival. Trailer. Vi ricordo che il film muto Asha Jaoar Majhe, opera prima di Sengupta, era stato presentato a Venezia, nel 2014, nell'ambito della rassegna autonoma Giornate degli Autori, e si era aggiudicato il premio per il miglior regista esordiente (stesso premio conquistato anche ai National Award). Once upon a time in Calcutta è in cartellone a Milano, in occasione dell'evento Le vie del cinema 2021, dal 22 al 30 settembre.

Vi segnalo inoltre il cortometraggio pachistano Mulaqat, diretto da Seemab Gul, in concorso nella sezione Orizzonti.

Sreelekha Mitra e Arindam Ghosh - Venezia, 2021

RASSEGNA STAMPA (aggiornata al 28 settembre 2021)

- A city of walking ghosts and new beginnings, Nandini Ramnath, Scroll, 7 settembre 2021. Intervista concessa da Sengupta:

'The earliest image in Once Upon a Time in Calcutta is of fire. Out of the ashes emerge, appropriately enough, an elegy about one of India’s most storied cities. (...) Kolkata is both a graveyard of desires and the birthplace of new and sometimes unmanageable desires. The Bengali-language film follows Ela, a small-time actor, and the people in her lives. (...) After the death of her only daughter, Ela resolves to leave her husband Shishir and move out of their residence in an old building in South Kolkata. Ela’s journey is guided by the reappearance of an old flame and a tempting offer from the head of a building project in a satellite city on the outskirts of the megapolis. The movie also explores Ela’s relationship with her mother, a famed cabaret dancer, and her step-brother Bubu, who owns a theatre for stage productions in the heart of the city and is refusing to sell it to a real estate developer. Among the themes is the tension between the comfort of habit and the seductions of untested experiences, the rising influence of speculative capital and questionable get-rich-quick schemes, and the transactional nature of modern relationships. Stasis and rupture co-exists in the city of Sengupta’s imagination. Rabindranath Tagore is a talismanic presence in a movie filled with restless souls and the ghosts of an oppressive past. “All papers are fake these days,” a character observes - a truth that Ela is eventually forced to embrace. (...) Once Upon a Time in Calcutta contains striking tableaux, mood lighting and expressionist locations imbued with meaning and stories of their own. (...)

The city in your film appears to be growing outwards but hollowing out too.

The core of the city isn’t made of physical spaces but of people. That’s what I wanted to explore - the city and its various layers through the people. This is something I have been feeling for the past few years - the core of the city is kind of emptying out slowly. A lot of it has to do with globalisation and a booming information technology industry. There doesn’t appear to be a sense of great discovery, and getting to know people nowadays requires great emotional investment. For me, the film was about getting into the minds of the people. They inhabit worlds of their own with their own baggage and aspirations.

‘Once Upon a Time in Calcutta’ was previously titled ‘Memories and My Mother’, right?

Yes, that was previously the working title. The story and script were in a more magic realist space and had to do more with the fact that all the characters were motherless, and their mothers appeared to them as spirit. It started evolving and became more realistic. Of course, the city changed too, as did I. An earlier title was Aquarium, about looking at these different kinds of fish but from the outside. I liked the title a lot, but no one else did.

How has your relationship with the city of your birth changed, specially since you divide your time between Kolkata and Mumbai?

I lived full-time in Bombay between 2008 and 2011 and then again for a few years. I continue to work out of Bombay, it’s like my workshop. I feel most at home in Bombay, the people are warm and there is a sense camaraderie but the space gets to me. I moved back to Calcutta because I get more space to work here. I have my music and painting studio here. There are many things to crib about, such as the attitudes of people, the slowness of getting things done, the fact of being stuck in certain ideas. But there are also certain strange comforts - the familiarity of the afternoons the evenings, the sounds of bells, the smells of bedsheets that have come out of old wooden cupboards. It’s a complex love-hate relationship.

Tell us about the faces and places in your film.

Everything you see in the film is based on real people or experiences. For instance, the dinosaur that is demolished to make way for a flyover in the film - there was one such dinosaur that was built whe made in 1995 when the Science City [tourist attraction] came up. A flyover was built here later. When the half-made flyover approaching from one end and reached the dinosaur, it looked like the starting point of a race. I had clicked a photo at the time. It had a deeper meaning for me, and in fact, is the starting point for this film. Characters like the dinosaur cannot exit in this new eco-system. I always like looking for real locations and existing places. (...) There is no pre-decided colour palette. This is a contemporary film about the beauty as well as vast and stark differences in all these places - the clashing colours and un-coordination, in a sense. Bubu’s theatre is the Sarkarina theatre in Hatibagan. (...) When the theatre started declining, cabaret was introduced here. It’s where people like Miss Shefali performed. She appeared in a few Satyajit Ray films. (...) Ela is supposed to be her daughter in my film.

Why did you pick Gökhan Tiryaki as the cinematographer?

I have always wanted to work with him. His films with Nuri Bilge Ceylan are very character-driven, and I am a very visual person. The film is a mixture of both. I thought it would be interesting for him to have his mind on the film. Besides, I love collaborating with and working with people. We shot the film between January and March in 2019. I like to work with a light crew, I like it to be peaceful and meditative. When we would go the sets, Gökhan and I would first sit around and talk about the scenes. We would get the actors on the sets and then make them do their scenes over and over again. We would just watch them, and not film them. Gökhan would move round them like a planet to get the right point of view. Once we fixed the angle, we would only then take the shot.

Why made you cast film and television Sreelekha Mitra in the lead role?

The casting process went on for two years. But when writing Ela’s character, Sreelekha was the only one who I felt could play this role. Her own life and struggles have been similar to Ela’s. When we were shooting the film, she was trying to move to a new apartment at the end of the city. She has always felt that the Bengali film industry never gave her the love and respect she deserved. She has an interesting physicality, and brings greyness to the way she behaves with the other characters.

- Recensione di Once upon a time in Calcutta, Sankhayan Ghosh, Film Companion, 7 settembre 2021: 'There are many remarkable things in Aditya Vikram Sengupta’s Once Upon A Time in Calcutta, which begins with the death of the protagonist’s four year old daughter. One of them is how, instead of crushing her, the event sets the middle-aged and independent minded Ela (Sreelekha Mitra, in one of those roles that makes you wonder which came first: the character, or the actor?) on the path of liberation. (...) In another film, this would have been a personal journey narrative, disconnected from the larger forces at play. Sengupta’s film locates her in a specific time and place, connected to the events and spaces that have shaped Kolkata in the past few years. (...) The film has been rightly described as a chronicling of a post-communist era city. This is a new Kolkata - one that our cinema has failed to reflect. Once Upon A Time in Calcutta tries to articulate the complicated feelings for this new city of blue and white. The title makes sense for multiple reasons, and one of them is the refusal to let go of the past. (...) Once Upon a Time in Calcutta is both Sengupta’s most ambitious and conventional film. It shows the director in a somewhat new light. (...) Here Sengupta (...) has a better go at handling actors the way we are used to seeing in narrative cinema. And he seems to posses a natural talent for it, imbuing even the smallest characters with something unique to hold our attention. (...) This is a film rich in images, scenes and shots'.

- Recensione di Once upon a time in Calcutta, Gautaman Bhaskaran, CNN News18, 8 settembre 2021: 'Sengupta, who is also the writer, tries to present a city after it’s emergence post the 32-year Communist rule in West Bengal (whose capital is Calcutta, now renamed Kolkata). The piece is nostalgic both in its tone and tenor, and the richness of the colours gives an almost ethereal glow to the city. (...) The images are fascinating and certainly brought back memories of the city where I grew up, and whose decline I watched with a lot of sadness. (...) Once Upon A Time in Calcutta has a compelling plotline, but wanders away from it by taking on too many issues. A chit-fund scam, flyover collapses, corruption, jilted love and what not crowd the narrative making the pacing jerky. And unimaginative editing robs the feature of a certain crispness which could have been otherwise achieved. It also is far too long. Half way through, we lose sight of the core premise, and Sengupta’s effort is laudable, even ambitious, but somewhere he lets the reins slip'.

- Recensione di Once upon a time in Calcutta, Elisabetta Colla, Taxidrivers, 16 settembre 2021: 'Atmosfera grigia e cupa, (...) per raccontare una Calcutta insolita. (...) In alcuni momenti  difficile da seguire e poco ispirato. Pure la modalità in cui le storie vengono ad intrecciarsi e l’affresco di una Calcutta ‘altra’ interessano e colpiscono. (...) Una narrativa densa e noir, il c’era una volta di una favola drammatica, con qualche raro raggio di sole che sembra intravedersi di quando in quando nei difficili rapporti umani raccontati dal film. Il regista descrive individui con gravi problematiche esistenziali, solitudini relazionali e nostalgie di tempi migliori, quelli dell’infanzia, quando era ancora forte la dimensione comunitaria, e la difficile ricerca di un posto nel mondo, dopo aver sperimentato il dolore e la morte. (...) Ispirato a fatti realmente accaduti, il film (...) potrebbe alludere a una critica di Sengupta all’urbanizzazione selvaggia, priva di regolamentazione, che ha accelerato i processi di disintegrazione socio-familiare e favorito ulteriormente miseria e solitudine. “Il film è il culmine dei sentimenti e delle emozioni che provo per Calcutta e i suoi abitanti - afferma il regista - una città impegnata nel tentativo di stare al passo con un mondo in rapida evoluzione e le aspirazioni e gli sforzi di persone che annaspano in una metropoli in continua espansione. Utilizzando personaggi reali ed eventi effettivamente accaduti, il film è il mio tentativo di eliminare i vari strati della città un tempo comunitaria, per rivelare una condizione umana tragica ma, allo stesso tempo, piena di speranza e di gioia. Ho cercato di dare agli spettatori un vero spaccato delle acque torbide di Calcutta, attraverso dei personaggi vivaci che cercano in ogni modo di ritagliarsi un loro spazio, senza affogare”.'

- Recensione di Once upon a time in Calcutta, Raffaele Meale, Quinlan, 28 settembre 2021: 'Sono molte le suggestioni che derivano dalla visione di Once Upon a Time in Calcutta. (...) Innanzitutto emerge una riflessione che il film condivide con altre opere provenienti dall’Asia e viste al Lido: (...) in un mondo oramai completamente e compiutamente globalizzato, (...) anche nazioni che fino a qualche anno - decennio? - fa erano considerate “in via di sviluppo” quando non direttamente “terzo mondo” presentano fenomeni sociali ben noti e storicizzati in Occidente, ad esempio la cosiddetta gentrificazione. (...) Sengupta (...) ha le idee molto chiare, e partendo dallo spunto narrativo suggerito dianzi vorrebbe aprire uno squarcio nel velo posto di fronte all’India contemporanea, mostrando il rampantismo di un microcosmo sempre più avvelenato dal demone del potere economico, e dunque spinto ad azioni perfino inimmaginabili. Il suo è dunque un discorso parzialmente metaforico ma soprattutto morale, la visione di un mondo disgregato che ha perso le sue radici e fluttua in un contesto socio-economico dominato dalla barbarie, dall’homo homini lupus. La Calcutta mostrata nel film è una città/mostro, cloaca nella quale si annaspa e si può al massimo sperare di sopravvivere: perfino il raggiungimento di una apparente sistemazione, magari in un modernissimo grattacielo fuori dalla cintura del centro, è illusorio, e del tutto transitorio. Per mappare questo mondo in apparente progresso ed evidente autodistruzione Sengupta si lancia in un grande racconto corale, mettendo insieme trame e sotto-trame nel tentativo di permettere allo spettatore la posizione privilegiata (in uno dei grattacieli di nuova costruzione?) per una visione d’insieme. Il risultato non è privo di fascino, ma alla lunga risulta farraginoso anche perché il regista non riesce ad evitare quelle che appaiono in tutto e per tutto come scelte di comodo, o per meglio dire retoriche: ecco dunque l’amore del passato che torna a palesarsi celando però la verità sulla propria condizione familiare; ecco il criminale che si propone a Ela come risolutore della soluzione portando con sé suggerimenti a dir poco inappropriati; ecco il campo controcampo tra il reale - il teatro abbandonato da decenni al suo destino - e l’onirico - la memoria della donna che con le sue esibizioni aveva reso celebre il locale; ecco, infine, una politica corrotta che ama vendersi come innovativa, visionaria, moderna. Tutti schemi usurati, un po’ come lo schema Ponzi alla base della truffa immobiliare in cui viene messa in mezzo Ela, e che alla lunga appesantiscono un racconto cui avrebbe giovato una maggiore leggerezza espositiva, e forse anche un’ambizione meno evidente. Per questi motivi Once Upon a Time in Calcutta non riesce ad appassionare, se non per alcune singole intuizioni (il crollo non solo metaforico della politica cittadina nel finale, per esempio)'.