What Ails the Institute (or Eminence as Career)

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Aashad Ka Ek Din, Anil Zankar, Basu Chatterjee, Bert Haanstra, Bhuvan Shome, Big City Blues, Bill Gates, Chairy Tale, CILECT Review, Delta Phase One, Film Finance Corporation, Gajendra Chauhan, Girish Karnad, Glass, Guru Dutt, Happy Anniversary, Incident At The Owl Creek, KK Mahajan, Kumar Shahani, Mani Kaul, Mario Miranda, Maya Darpan, Mehboob Khan, Mrinal Sen, Neighbours, New Wave, Norman McLaren, NVK Murthy, Prof Satish Bahadur, Raoul Coutard, Ritwick Ghatak, Samapti, Sara Aakash, Satyajit Ray, Shyam Benegal, Ski Roti, Skidoo 23, Subhash Ghai, Terminus, VGIK, Vinod Khanna, Wedding

Film Institute of India, as it was then called, started in 1962 and already by 1968 when I joined as a Direction student, Prof Satish Bahadur had collected most of his trademark shorts for teaching: Big City Blues, Wedding, Happy Anniversary, Terminus, Skidoo 23, Incident at the Owl Creek. Calling them text films, he analyzed them for us to smithereens. Followed Glass, Delta Phase One and other Bert Haanstra classics; then Neighbors, Chairy Tale and the rest of Norman McLaren’s. Longest was Satyajit Ray’s Samapti, the only Indian film of the lot, at 50 minutes. Among all these masterpieces—and to my secret admiration—Wedding was a work of students. It was a 20-minutes long diploma film from Moscow’s VGIK and produced under similar parameters as our own.

A pharmacist boy meets a musician girl on the city bus and they get talking. She has a domineering mother and the boy is afraid of her but hopes he can charm her to let them go on a date. One day, formally dressed and holding out a bunch of flowers, he decides to visit the girl’s house and dreams of success. But put to practice things end up horribly wrong. The girl has gotten married the same day and happens to return home with her groom and the guests just then. The boy is devastated but manages to hide in time. When he leaves, it’s with the same sprightly steps and flowers held out the same as before but a beaten, tragic figure.

Over 35 years of my teaching association with the FTII and 10 years since, not a single one of our diploma films measures up to Wedding’s simplicity, charm, tidiness, universal appeal, even profundity—why not?—and a downright killer sting at the end.

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Being a slow poke it took me towards the end of my years in the Institute to realise the enormity of the issue of quality of diploma films. What makes a good film school and how much of its goodness comes from the quality of its films? After Satyajit Ray, was our third world apology sufficient to cover up our inadequacies? Our “New Wave” films (a good number of which were made by ex-students), which we identified with and lent moral support to, were they any better? I had attended a number of film festivals and experienced the embarrassment in the first hand. Then I saw the newspaper coverage of those same festivals and read a different story. Writing for home readership, the Indian reporters portrayed the festival as though spinning around Indian films whereas foreign coverage barely noted our quaint titles and directors and sari-wrapped actresses, all of which helped towards nothing more than projecting the festivals’ international flavour. How can you have an international festival and not have blacks and browns and yellows and turbans and caps and the Chinese and the Mongols? (Chinese those days were not the Chinese they are today.)

Over time I saw a pattern. The whole thing was a game played between three parties, filmmakers, critics and the ministry, defending and justifying one another to the tax-paying public. Filmmakers made films by and large to one or the other art film likeness picked up from festivals, the critics variously praised them as a part of their declared commitment to the Wave and the bureaucrats thickened their files with press cuttings to justify expenditure to the auditors as well as to the political bosses. A mutual admiration society if you will. All three were an inevitable part of the glamorous jamboree to film festivals around the world.

All of which could be forgiven—after all, even if Bill Gates were to spare some crumbs from his table and decide to start a film movement, this would be the way to go—provided the process had thrown up a genuine talent. That sadly didn’t happen. Personalities aplenty but world-class filmmakers, none. After decades of government investment in films, Indian cinema’s undisputed greats have remained Satyajit Ray, Ritwick Ghatak and Guru Dutt. All three predate the Indian New Wave by decades.

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One day sometime in the mid-80s, I saw a blazing red SUV (or was it orange?) parked on the Institute’s main road in front of the Cinematography department. All other cars looked puny and grey by comparison. Turned out it belonged to a successful ex-student of cinematography who had come to hold a workshop with camera students. All day the students passing by kept turning their heads to the car but himself, the young man was a picture of courtesy and humility. He hadn’t forgotten the production staff (light boys in particular), wanted to meet the present occupant of his hostel room and invited students to meet him for work in Bombay after the Institute. You may have your differences on the colour of his car but the man was living every film student’s dream anywhere the world.

Some of us wondered how far he could go in his career. He had already shot half a dozen A grade films and could shoot a dozen or two more. (A la Shyam Benegal, never say no to nothing.) Besides a flat in Bombay, he could buy another get away in Alibagh; then moving sideways, jostle up to the government and line up for a Padma Shree. Could he ever aspire to be a great cameraman? What does it take to be one in any case?

To my mind KK Mahajan is the only one from the Institute who comes closest to acquiring that stature. A very earthy Punjabi, he wasn’t your sophisticate with jargon but a ‘film worker’, who heard you patiently, filtered out wheat from a lot of chaff and gave you a good clean image. Unnoticed by many, KK’s career started exactly when Kodak’s black-and-white stock stopped being available in India but he gave consistently well-exposed stunning black-and-white results using ORWO negative and newly started Hindustan Photo Film’s lowly Indu positive. Above all he was happy to rough it out under low budget conditions that went with the Film Finance Corporation sponsored films.

As it happens, KK did not get associated with one single director but worked with all those leading the New Wave pack and more: Mrinal Sen, Mani Kaul, Kumar Shahani and Basu Chatterjee, (much like Raoul Coutard in relation to the French New Wave.) Cartoonist Mario Miranda was the first to recognise KK’s cult status and made a crisp pencil sketch of him at the camera for an article in Filmfare. No other technician ever again came to receiving such an honour. (That sketch would make a perfect illustration for this piece but I couldn’t find it.) NVK Murthy, our Director at the time, had the great wit and foresight to invite KK to read the convocation address way ahead of his years—such recognition usually comes to people much closer to their expire-by date. And if some gaps remained in KK’s mystique and myth, the man’s alcoholism flew in to seal them shut. “No matter how late the pack up, KK must drink his quota of booze after the shoot. But he would be the first to get up for that sunrise shot the next day.” Which was no doubt true.

But even KK Mahajan, alas, would not be among Cinema’s immortals because there is no film he was associated with that would stand the test of time. In fact, truth be told, they are already bangle material, those films. Bhuvan Shome, Uski Roti, Aashad Ka Ek Din, Sara Aakash and Kumar Shahani’s Maya Darpan…. Should that shock you, don’t just go by your nurtured, ‘cultivated’ impression of these films, try and check them out on the screen afresh. The farther away in time we get from these New Wave films, the smaller they grow.

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Institute’s failure is actually only its student/ex-student directors’ failure. For others, the challenge is limited and many of our boys and girls today are world-class technicians. Light up a given location or set, and pan or tilt smooth, that’s the essentials of camera. Record clearly without the microphone showing in the frame and afterwards level and mix sounds provided by the editor, that’s recording. Edit to a scheme the footage generated during shooting, often just organising it so it makes sense, that’s editing.

But the directors’ call is tricky: First have a story, pant pant pant, then tell it with clarity, more pant pant pant. That’s it. To me all directors working today in the country, Institute or no Institute, are in varying degrees challenged in this key area. Their engaging accounts of difficulties they have had on the way to the screen hoodwink no one. We aren’t interested in their reasons for failure; we would much rather have them succeed, how about that? This subcontinent of humanity called India has been generous to filmmakers. Those who have told stories with clarity and emotional integrity have been rewarded with godhood. Others are mere chaff, a perpetually disgruntled lot, happy to wear the title of a filmmaker and whining their way to maintaining a matching lifestyle…

In the Institute’s context, it’s this disgruntled majority from all courses that has waged strikes down the years. Sub-consciously they are telling the world, these students, that they can’t perform because the Institute is so poorly run. Consciously—and this is interesting—they fight to be able to establish and cement relationship with the ex-students who they eventually see as their foothold in the industry. Filmmaking looked much easier from outside. That story telling could be so difficult can take the students/ex-students their entire careers to realise—and that only if they are lucky. They labor under the impression that anyone with basic intelligence and imagination—like themselves—could write or tell a story impromptu. It looks beneath their dignity to address story telling as an issue, much less to practice the craft through repeated effort. Story is verifiable while mouthing pompous film theory is not. Laffazi is enough to win the battle there, they think.

Before I am attacked with that timeless sheeshe-ke-ghar dialogue from Hindi cinema, let me admit to being a victim of the malaise myself. I recognised the problem in my own case, then saw it as fairly widespread among students in my charge. I began writing screenplays right after graduation, but after months and years of labor—“When is your film happening?” “I’m working on the script”—nothing ever got completed. Then I set that aside and took up another one. At the end of my teaching career I had a large trunk-load of handwritten foolscap ‘raddi’ that should have been about half a dozen scripts. (Now I have given up writing those; I just do pieces such as the present one once in a while.)

So, as a ‘decorated’ double-gold medalist in Direction from one of the earliest batches of the FTII, I count myself as the first culprit as regards the story, with a long queue of who’s who of Indian cinema following…

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However, it’s not as though I didn’t move to address the problem among the students. I did. And got egg on my face.

Syllabus revision has been as frequent as student strikes in the Institute, be it Subhas Ghai’s count of 39 times or Anil Zankar’s 7. In 2000, for once we decided to introduce a real radical change in the syllabus. As senior faculty and both of us ex-students, Prof Mehboob Khan and I led our colleagues to build in a component of student accountability in the course pattern. Not all would go to the next year, we decided; there were 2-3 seats less in 2^nd and further 2-3 less in 3^rd years (duly ploughing back the saved resources to enrich the remaining exercises both on time and duration.) Those who had to leave after 1^st or 2^nd years were not to be dumped into the sea but given suitable certification to join the profession at appropriate levels. Having to compete for seats every year was going to ensure application among students. The Academic and Governing Councils approved the new syllabus for implementation.

Interestingly, both current and ex-students jointly challenged the decision in high court even though neither party stood to be affected by the change. They were “fighting for future generations of students,” they said in the court. They lost. As a wit commented at the time, they wanted nothing less than full 3-year multiple entry visas—sure to be extended to 6—for everyone to the Institute campus that everybody loves to love. Admissions were duly made for the new course, students admitted and classes had gone on for three months when Girish Karnad was suddenly made Director of Nehru Centre in London and Vinod Khanna brought in in his place as chairman. Khanna’s brief was already known when he came to the Institute almost riding a galloping horse. To a jam-packed audience in the Main Theatre, he declared that the old course would be brought back and carried on the same chant in his meeting with the faculty afterwards. As on the screen, he was an instant hero among students and ex-students and before anybody could ask him what good cinema was, he was already and happily enshrined among the galaxy of eminent Chairmen of the FTII.

To be sure, the slide down of courses from 3 years to the present going rate of 7 has happened under the watch of the best of national awardee chairmen, none of them Nobel material. Given a suitable selection of clippings from YouTube, Vinod Khanna would not peg much higher than Gajendra Chauhan. Clearly it was a trade off behind closed doors between the ‘eminent’ Girish Karnad and the government to force an overall popular decision—academic procedures and propriety be hanged!—to restore the old course even for the 3 months old batch. Nobody noticed the irony that it was roughly the same time when the country had drawn a blank in the Olympic games and for the umpteenth time pundits were analysing the reasons for such a poor showing by a country of whatever number of millions we were at that time.

Just before the flip-flop I wrote an article for CILECT Review Our Baby-Fresh New Course giving my experience of teaching that new course. I am afraid you’d have to contend with my view of that period if you want to know how it was then, for no other piece on the subject was written at the time. The article is also posted on my blog.

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PK Nair’s National Film Archive of India (Part 2)

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Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Alliance Francaise, Andrej Wajda's Kanal, Apur Sansar, BBC's People's Century, Bert Haanstra, Bharat Ratan, Big City Blues, Chairt Tale, Clouzot's Wages Of Fear, Delta Phase One, Diary For Timothy, Doordarshan's A Face in the Crowd, Films Division, French IDHEC, General Screening, Glass, Guru Dutt, Happy Anniversary, Information and Broadcasting Minister Mrs Indira Gandhi, Ismael Merchant, Jagat Murari, Jaykar Bungalow, John Shankarmangalam, Kaagaz Ke Phool, Le Femis, Lina Wertmuller's Seduction Of Mimi, Lines Horizontal, Lines Vertical, Mascow's VGIK, Max Mueller Bhavan, Narayan Phadke, Neighbours, Night Mail, Norman McLaren, Notes On A Triangle, Opening Speech, Oscar, Ozu's Autumn Afternoon, Paris based FIAF, Pather Panchali's negative, Prof Satish Bahadur, Pune's Westend theatre, Satyajit Ray, Shindo's Island, Shivendra Singh Dungarpur, Sohrab Modi's Kundan, Solo, Song of Ceylon, Soviet Cultural Centre, Speaking of Glass, Summer Film Appreciation Course, Taan Sen or Kaan Sen, Terminus, The Celluloid Man, The Human Dutch, The Other Side, Two, Uday Shankar's Kalpana, V Shantaram, Vinay Shukla, Wedding, Wisdom Tree, Woman of the Dunes, Zoo

(Continued from Part 1)

… Among all the activities of the young and growing Archive, none was more important to the Institute students than as provider of good films. Since generations of us have seen NFAI in that single light, let’s take a pause and bathe awhile in that ‘collective unconscious’. Given right stimulants and half a chance, recalling Institute screenings can send us, the ex-students from that period, into near-orgasmic raptures.

From all accounts, when the FTII began—which was in the early 60s—it acquired a small library of film prints. Moscow’s VGIK and the French IDHEC (which is today’s Le Femis), on whose pattern its curriculum had been drawn, were also its advisers on the choice of films. About 50 shorts and some feature films were all that the students had to see, re-see and to re-re-see. Incredible as it may sound today, Adoor Gopalakrishnan and John Shankarmangalam’s first batch of students had just one ‘General’ screening a week, on Saturdays, and it would be held in the only theatre available at that time, the Sound Theatre on the first floor of that department. One of the iconic pictures of Mrs Gandhi reading the Institute’s first convocation address as the Information and Broadcasting Minister took place in this theatre.

In 1968 when I joined the Institute, NFAI was just coming on its own and we saw one feature film every alternate evening. The venue too had shifted to a larger Main Theatre at the Wisdom Tree. Short film classics, a mix of FTII and Archive collection and mostly used by Prof Bahadur in his classes, such as Night Mail, Song Of Ceylon, Terminus, Diary For Timothy, Big City Blues, Happy Anniversary, The Other Side, Solo; the Bert Haanstra packet consisting of The Human Dutch, Glass, Speaking Of Glass, Delta Phase One, Zoo; and the Norman McLaren packet with Neighbors, Chairy Tale, Opening Speech, Notes On A Triangle, Lines Horizontal and Lines Vertical were the flavor of the times. Most teaching staff, having come on deputation from Films Division, had brought with them some of their more successful documentaries but these stood out somewhat embarrassed in the company of the world-class rest. ‘Big Brother’ Soviet Union had provided mint-quality 35mm prints of the Dovzhenko-Pudovkin-Eisenstein classics, as well as later a cute 20-minute student film Wedding (and another by the same director, Two), which remained an inspiration for generations of Direction students for its simple production values, tidiness of approach and aching intensity. [One of my personal regrets after a whole career teaching at the Institute is that we could never produce a diploma film of matching quality.] The feature films from the Institute’s collection that I remember were Andrej Wajda’s Kanal—Sohrab Modi had already stolen the underground sewer scene idea for his Kundan from here!—Shindo’s unique, dialogue-less but saturated with sounds and enchanting, landscape-filling melody, Island, and Henri-Georges Clouzot’s chilling Wages Of Fear. Bahadur sahib had told us that Wages existed in two versions and that our print was the Clouzot original where none of the four drivers escapes at the end. The other version, shot and released at the distributors’ instance, had Yves Montand return to the base alive, collect the prize money, buy two plane tickets and leave with his girlfriend to freedom and happiness. I’m not sure I fully grasped the import of the difference at the time but for the 22-year old me, watching Wages Of Fear was the memorable first experience of that classic can’t-sit-can’t-leave dilemma. Among Indian features we had Uday Shankar’s Kalpana—great dance implants upon the usual Bollywood fare—and of course about half a dozen Satyajit Rays. Thanks to our government clout, FTII had managed to break into the Max Mueller Bhavan-Alliance Francaise-Soviet Cultural Centre stream of films that had thus far been circulating only in Bombay, Calcutta, Delhi and Madras. We looked to these films for the latest in world cinema; these and the Hollywood releases exclusive to Westend theatre in the fashionable downtown called Main Street. Needless to say, of course, that today’s boxed-in Westend is not a patch on the open spread out original of the past!

Bahadur sahib would issue a detailed weekly General Screening schedule that was accurate on information and scrupulously spell-checked and proofread. Besides title of films, it featured name of the director, country of origin, year of production and running time of the film. Regular classes, which for most part were hands-on practicals in the afternoon, were over by 5, and after a 30-minute tea break and two buzzers, Bahadur sahib would be seen walking down the MT aisle slope. He would leave his jhola on the front corner seat and stand rolling a cigarette as students poured in. (Emboldened by which we too lit up in different corners of the theatre and nobody minded! Smoking wasn’t as big a sin then as it is today. But we never littered. Like Prof Bahadur, we too collected ash and stubs in our half-opened matchboxes.) Then using a microphone specially laid out and warmed up for the purpose—“Testing, one, two, three, hello”—Bahadur sahib would introduce the film. Broadly keeping to its historical-political context, he would skillfully bring his presentation to a head where the scene was ready to burst into projection. Whereupon lights would dim, projectors come alive and the magic rectangle light up. Beside the ethereal beauty of those great films, it was Bahadur sahib’s presentation that made the experience of General Screening such an unqualified popular success. Attending and submitting a diary for evaluation was compulsory for I year students but it never seemed a compulsion. Rather we saw this as a chance to impress Prof Bahadur individually with our ‘original’ observations and turns of phrase.

By the time I finished my course in 1971, not only had the number of screenings gone up to one every evening but there was also an additional late night show after dinner. This was Nair’s screening grudgingly conceded by Murari. Not yet having his own projection theatre, Nair used the Institute’s to check his growing number of prints and we were welcome! Complete opposite in character and flavor to the General Screening, we adored Nair’s screening but took care not to look too happy lest it should be withdrawn.

Like addicts we would rush through an early dinner and return to the Main Theatre. (Or the smaller CRT, Classroom Theatre, for 16mm.) As soon as our supplier-in-chief appeared at the Main Gate—all along Nair has lived in Chatur bungalow next to the Institute—we would finish our smoke and begin to drift inside. His was the corner seat closest to the projection booth and screening would begin as soon as he had taken it. (We didn’t notice at the time but this was the diametric opposite position to Prof Bahadur’s seat in the same theatre.) Since this would be an entirely unseen fare coming from remote cultures—and, like everything else in the Institute, uncensored—this was truly our window to the world. Only if you had hooked up a date would there be a dilemma as to which way to go. “Intellectuals” and those without a date (often one and the same characters) would stick on seeing whatever was playing on the screen.

Of course, mostly it would be drab archival material which you sampled for ten minutes and walked away from. But often enough there were rewards and when those came, we had this additional, devilish pleasure of seeing at least some good films ahead of Prof Bahadur! Now he would have no option but to listen to our appraisals the next day, we thought bursting with glee. I distinctly remember Bahadur sahib’s fidgety expressions as he heard Vinay Shukla’s and my accounts of Woman of the Dunes and Ozu’s Autumn Afternoon. Continuing with shuffling papers and appearing not very interested, he kept asking searching questions trying to visualize the stuff that had so excited us but was cautious not to give away any inkling of which way his own impressions were forming.

Sometimes there were howlers. Word went round once that the Archive had received a 35mm colour print of a sexy Italian film that Nair was holding back from screening. Not only did the title suggest a full-blown seduction but directed by a young woman, it also promised to be a ‘double-distilled’ take on the subject. Eventually the film hit the screen to a drooling packed house. As it happened, it was a brilliant fare and everyone enjoyed but came out laughing at the end. For Seduction of Mimi was our first Lina Wertmuller film—again, her first ever projection in India—where there was a good deal of skin-show and sexual action alright but the seduction of the title had been meant to be a political seduction and Mimi, rather than a nubile doe-eyed neighborhood girl, was a hairy man!

In the midst of all this excitement nobody noticed that within 6-7 years of the Archive, FTII had gone from starvation diet of films to the other extreme where we were drunk on viewing films. So drunk indeed that without our realizing, viewing films and talking about them began to look real fun and trying to make them, drudgery! The issue was debated even in the national press through a telling pun of the times: Had the Institute’s objective been to produce Taan-sens or kaan-sens; singers or enlightened listeners, rasiks? After years of struggle and exasperated that more and more bleary-eyed students had been staying away from his classes, Bahadur sahib was a bitter man. “When I began teaching I was a firm believer of the idea of free education,” he lamented echoing those socialist times. “But today, I think education should be heavily priced!” A similar malaise had infected the Summer Film Appreciation course. In response to the participants’ growing clamor for showing more and more films, he said: “For the duration of the course, the vaults of the Archive should be locked up and the keys thrown into the sea!” Or, “The best place to hold the FA course should be on board a ship off the coast of Lonavala!”

Nair of course was untouched by this controversy. He was after all a library, just a facility that made films available on demand. So as Bahadur sahib’s stock kept falling with every new batch of students, Nair’s image remained that of a generous provider, one steadfastly holding a pencil torch over his notepad as an active projection beam played overhead. Asking neither attendance, not attention, he continued to show choicest of films from all over the world. You were simply grateful and wanted to be seen exchanging notes with him on the film he had just shown and take his monosyllables-with-smile as Zen wisdom to be decoded as you proceeded to your hostel room to crash for the night.

But finally even the system could not cope with heavy demands on projection. Quality was given a go by and cheap multiple prints made of masterpieces. Well, you want projection, here it is! Some more? Take it! At first students didn’t know what had hit them; then understood that it wasn’t being elitist to expect perfect prints and great projection to view films, it was the basic minimum. That consuming art in compromised conditions is like seeing it on a headache.

But the damage was already done and it was irreversible. That was the end of good projection in the Institute as I had known it.

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NFAI was slow to start but quick to expand. Within a decade it had set up branch offices in Calcutta, Bangalore and Trivendrum. Gradually basic questions about archiving began to play out in the public domain. Being a slow poke, it took me decades to penetrate the haze created by books, films, Jaykar Bungalow and Prof Bahadur, and see NFAI for what it always was—another government department. The disillusionment came in stages and was painful. I can recall some instances.

Early in its life NFAI decided to subtitle its collection of regional films. Most of us had first learnt of the practice from seeing European films in the Institute. Since it needed a fresh print and the procedure had to be done abroad, subtitling was always an expensive proposition. Committees were formed to draw priority lists and when some of Ray films came up for consideration, dominated by new wave interests, they decided to divide the resources among their own productions. In a backhanded compliment, Ray’s films were made out to be so visual that they didn’t need subtitling! One result of this small-mindedness was that Apur Sansar remained permanently inaccessible to us at the Institute. We sailed through our entire course, and well into our careers later on, having seen just the bi-logy of the most famous trilogy of the world!

Another instance points to lack of clarity on NFAI’s objectives. At first the film industry took time to thaw towards NFAI; then driven by a sense of progressivism, some established producers started donating old prints of their “classics”. Soon more and more tattered prints began to fill the archive’s vaults. When Nair asked for better prints, the industry murmured to reimburse costs. Upon which, reminding everybody that he was government, Nair threatened to have the producers submit a fresh print by law before they were given censor certificates. Luckily, wiser counsel prevailed in Delhi and none of this came about. What would Nair do with prints of all films made in the country, I wondered. Where would he keep them in the first place?

Satyajit Ray suffered his heart attack in 1982 and remained debilitated for the rest of his days until death in 1992. That’s when Nair retired too. Well before that, somewhere in the middle of 80s, concerns began to be raised about the state of Pather Panchali’s negatives.  One day—I remember it was in front of the Main Theatre and we were waiting for the evening screening—Nair broke the news. He had just returned from Calcutta and assuming gloomy airs told a small group of us that the original negative of the iconic film had “shrunk” because of poor lab conditions!

Too shocked for words, I ended up carrying the issue to the pillow. Did that mean the end of that landmark film!? Even if it could somehow be retrieved—but how?—the film had been compromised and who was to blame? The laboratory where the negative had been stored or, as legal owner of the film, the producer, who in this case was the government of West Bengal? In a limited technical sense, of course, both were answerable but since when have the laboratories and producers been known to be an enlightened lot? What about NFAI, PK Nair himself? Sure, the negative was not in his charge but the onus of vigilance and a sensitive response concerning works of cultural value rested with his department. They were the members of the Paris based FIAF—check out their glorious website—for international perspective on precisely those kinds of problems, otherwise what was Nair doing there every other day? Lumiere’s negatives were sixty years older than PP, had they all shrunk?

Luckily—and his soul be blessed for that—Ismael Merchant, and later Hollywood intervened to recover and save Ray’s cinema for the world. But it’s a pity that while Nair kept expressing pain and indignity at the loss of early Indian cinema on all possible forums, he had been sleeping over the gradual decay of PP negative throughout his archiving career! Rather than be a news breaker, PK Nair ought to have been the whistleblower.

Even more inexcusable in many ways was another of Nair’s failures that came to light just before he retired. In the media it’s a common practice to keep material and write-ups researched and ready ahead of an important person’s impending demise. Ray gave NFAI 10 years to prepare good copies of his films for showing when he died but all that Nair could send to Delhi were scratchy old prints, indifferently sub-titled and even with reels mixed up. [Perhaps Oscar and Bharat Ratan came too suddenly and unexpectedly for Nair, who may have thought Ray was a forgotten force!] Doordarshan accommodated by suitably heightening the introduction pitch—‘Be grateful that they are there!’—and tucked them away in a late night slot for good 10-15 nights! In one sleigh of sarkari hand, two departments of the government of India had taken care of the Oscar and a whole Bharat Ratan without a murmur of complaint from any side! Ray ought to have made a couple of films less and cultivated officialdom instead…

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Nair’s imprint on the NFAI lasted until much after he retired and left the place. Here are some more instances.

In mid-90s I made some episodes for Doordarshan’s A Face In The Crowd. One of them happened to be on one Narayan Phadke from Pune, who was a passionate collector of film posters, photographs, booklets and other memorabilia related to Indian cinema. Having no space at home, he had arranged to stack everything in a deep dark loft at his work place. The whole thing was in shambles and I wanted to conclude the episode by asking him to donate his collection in the professional care of the NFAI. He laughed at the suggestion and told me he had been in touch with the Archive. “My dump is any day better than theirs. Here at least I know what is where!”

The same shoddiness got highlighted to me through another example soon after. Commemorating turn of the century, BBC produced an ambitious 26-part, one-hour documentary series covering important milestones of the last hundred years. Titled People’s Century, the film devised a unique idiom for its narration. Interviewing only direct participants in the global events of the hundred years that they were examining—real live-wire centenarians were fished out for the earlier decades—it decided to use nothing but stock shots from the period as illustrations. This was that great broadcasting institution’s way of telling the story of the 20th century through the century’s own ‘voice’ and it worked extremely well.

What got tested in the process was the strength and efficiency of film archives all over the world. Each one was required to provide easy, classified access to the local material in their collection. From NFAI, however, the makers of People’s Century could extract nothing more than the standard baton charge footage of a white policeman in a solar topee as a dhoti-clad local ducks while managing his dangling wire-rim glasses and escapes. Each episode of series lists about 20 film archives of the world in the credit titles but NFAI figures in just 2 or 3. Having material is one thing, making it available on demand is quite another.

In 2003 (in a rather rare happening for a society that’s not obsessed with fire), one of NFAI’s nitrate vaults caught fire. These were the notoriously inflammable, nitrate base negatives of the early films that NFAI had stocked for years at various points in the Institute. The flames hissed through tiny windows of that 30 feet cuboid structure left behind by V Shantaram (which we later saw had meter-thick walls specially built) in the manner of air-pressure kerosene stoves as we stood watching in horror.

Next day papers were full of the story. Cub reporters had had a field day brushing up stock phrases lamenting the ‘irreparable loss to India’s film heritage’ but surprisingly the Institute community too went advancing similar frothy sentiments to nodding heads throughout the day. Everything ran as though to a script with no pause allowed and none taken to wonder how the cause of film heritage had been served for decades that the negatives had been with us until the day of the fire! Third day onward the staff had gone back to monitoring air conditioners as before. I am not aware of any new steps taken to use the surviving stuff for any productive purpose.

Should archives be just about mindless collecting?

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I have not seen Shivendra Singh Dungarpur’s documentary The Celluloid Man on PK Nair but judging from a number of write-ups and visual snatches, the longish film addresses none of these serious issues. Rather it seems to be cast in the Kaagaz Ke Phool mold where the old white haired film producer Guru Dutt returns unrecognized and revisits the studios and sets, which he once owned.

Which is just as well. Nair’s quietude, non-controversial conduct and long innings at the crease should be worthy of credit too. None of his successors would have this last luxury since the place is now counted as a fixed tenure posting for junior civil servants who come and go at fairly regular intervals. None of them stands to be heard about (much less fussed) unless either they commit a murder or do something—but what?—that wins them a major prize.

An old banyan tree somehow begins to look pious. PK Nair is a classic example of, “They also serve who stand and wait…”

(Concluded)