Mrinal Sen's 1983 film Khandahar was restored and shown at Cannes recently -- at the behest of the Prime Minister who felt this was a classic that should be available for the world to see

Saving grace

Mrinal Sen's 1983 film Khandahar was restored and shown at Cannes recentlyu00a0-- at the behest of the Prime Minister who felt this was a classic that should be available for the world to see. This is a first for us -- we're not keen on the archiving and preservation thingu00a0-- we don't have a single Indian silent film print in known existence today, even though India produced 1,300 silent films. We've left this to the British Film Institute, which restored much of Ritwik Ghatak's work and Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Foundation, whichu00a0 has undertaken the restoration of Uday Shankar's 1948 experimental film Kalpana.

It's unlikely there will be a similar Indian foundation within the mainstream cinema space anytime soonu00a0-- the closest the immensely wealthy Bombay film industry has got is creating the Mumbai Academy of the Moving Image (MAMI) film festival. Since last year they gave a Lifetime Achievement Award to Amitabh Bachchan, we may assume they are interested in a rather different sort of conservation.

The business of what to preserve as culture is a thorny one. In an ideal world, any work of art would have the life it deserves perhaps: if it resonates for people it will take root, a lush, flowering plant in the dense tropics of our imagination. If not, it will enjoy a fleeting season. But when we live in a world where who tells what story is often strongly controlled by the government's stultifying patronage or corporate Bollywood's search for the bionic market productu00a0-- this organic relationship between art and the imagination struggles somewhat.

Hindi films have been the most successful and resilient part of our culture. For many regular middle class familiesu00a0-- like mineu00a0-- Hindi films were the closest we came to any cultural consumption. For some they became a Magic Faraway Tree of sortsu00a0-- we climbed up to discover magic lands of other music, cinema and literature. For many, they remained the primary reference point, images, songs and dialogue, running through the emotional landscape like glitter through lurex.

Some of this preservation we owe to an unlikely sourceu00a0-- piracy. Video meant there was an alternative to the crap that was passing off as movies in the '80s: the pirated video cassette. People returned to the movies they remembered liking rather than taking whatever was put out in cinemas or shown by chance on Doordarshan.

There was something joyful in this accessu00a0-- also for the songwriters, composers, forgotten bit players and scriptwriters whose work could circulate again. Producers claim piracy caused them losses, one reason for not wanting to bankroll 'risky' projects. But the claimed losses of piracy are notional ones. We don't know how many films would have been bought at a price that suits producers and distributorsu00a0-- or if the film you really loved would have been considered worth putting out.
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"Bankable" projects flop miserably most of the timeu00a0-- yet that does not result in the production of new and beautiful films, but more of the same; the fixated behaviour of gamblers who cannot leave a losing game. But let's not be unsympathetic to producers because they are, you know, rich.

Of course, some producers like Films Division, NFDC and CFSI were immune to piracy. Though they have funded some wonderful films their greater achievement has been to never distribute them well or issue DVDs, ensuring that there's nothing to pirate; that these films did not have the chance to be remembered, leave alone forgotten. So, why should we cry that we don't have great films to show on the world stage? After all, we don't even show our own to ourselvesu00a0-- so how would we remember what they look like when we make them?