A star-studded evening saw the inaguration of the 5th edition of the Film Preservation and Restoration workshop at State Gallery of Art in the city recently. In attendance were Megastar Chiranjeevi, veteran filmmaker Shyam Benegal, King Nagarjuna and animal rights activist Amala Akkineni. Besides them, film director SS Rajamouli, producers Suresh Babu and Allu Arvind joined the cause of the need to preserve films.
MP T Subbarami Reddy and Jayesh Ranjan, principal secretary, IT and Industries and Commerce, Telangana, were also part of the programme.
Chiranjeevi described how an incident made him realise the need for preserving movies. He said: “On my 60th birthday, one of my producers gifted me the rights of Khaidi, the movie that gave me my star status. Next day, when I tried to find the negative for the film, I could not find it. I am emotionally attached to this film and the loss saddens me. This is why it is very necessary that we preserve our movies.”
Nagarjuna, whose Annapurna Studios is hosting the workshop from December 8 to 15, said: “In my family, we have been actors for 83 years. My father was an actor, and my kids are in films too. Altogether, we have acted in some 400 movies, but unfortunately, we never thought about preserving them. Despite my best efforts, I could neither find the print of the movie Geethanjali nor the negative of Shiva. I had acted in both these movies and they are my favourites.”
Saying that film making is a medium of preserving history in real time, Shyam Benegal said: “Cinema captures history in its own time. We are talking of keeping the present forever. The matter might not be of great aesthetic quality, but it will give you an idea of that era. That is why we have to put in efforts to take this great work forward.”
Rajamouli said that movies were not being preserved because people were not aware of the process. He said: “I was surprised to find that the Telugu print of Magadheera is lost, and we managed to retrieve a low-quality print in Tamil. The quality of the digital print was also not good.”
Commenting on bringing the workshop to Hyderabad this year, Shivendra Singh Dungarpur, founder and director of Film Heritage Foundation, said, “Over the last four years, we have been brought together 200 conservators, librarians, film scholars, academics, cinematographers, editors, colourists and technicians into our fold, who are eager to learn to save our remarkable film heritage. We are now ready to consolidate and build the country’s first world-class Centre of the Moving Image, an institution devoted to the art of film.”
Dr Nora Kennedy, Sherman Fairchild Conservator in Charge of the Department of Photograph Conservation, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, was conferred with the Film Heritage Foundation Outstanding Achievement Award and Dr Ray Edmondson, founder of the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia, was given the Lifetime Achievement Award during the ceremony.
This initiative of Film Heritage Foundation (FHF) and International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF) is supported by Viacom18 and Annapurna Studios. The week-long programme, certified by FIAF, will train 80 students from India, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh Sri Lanka and Afghanistan. Participants will be trained in processes to preserve, archive and restore both celluloid and digital films and film-related paper and photographic materials.