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With the digital switchover, the second largest film industry in the world has left 70% of its films to rot. Thanks to experts from around the world, the NGO Film Heritage Foundation is trying to save what remains of this immense legacy, particularly in Hyderabad.
From our correspondent in India,
Heaped up in the dust, thousands of cartridges stretch as far as the eye can see in the old Prasad cinematographic laboratory. Walking through its corridors, a rancid and acid scent rises to the nose: the " vinegar syndrome ", characteristic of rotting coils. " It is the smell of the death of Indian cinema, explains with sadness Shivendra Singh, president of the NGO Film Heritage Foundation . This laboratory made films, but like all the others, it closed its doors. Today it is used as a film cemetery. "
Humidity, heat, light: all factors that accelerate the breakdown of the components of dandruff - in this case cellulose acetate, used until the 1990s. With others, Shivendra Singh travels this forgotten place to save what can still be. On the metal boxes, the very name of the films is sometimes deleted. Opening a rusty lid, Marianna de Sanctis, from the Italian laboratory L'Immagine Ritrovata , cannot hide her disappointment. “ The condition is critical, very humid. You have to apply a drying treatment to the film, but I doubt that there are still images. "
Threat on Bollywood
The second largest film industry in the world, India has skipped preserving its physical archives since the transition to digital cameras. If there is an Indian film archive (National Film Archive of India), its means are very limited. " Bollywood (Hindi cinema), Kolywood (Tamil cinema), Tolywood (Bengali cinema) ... Imagine, we produce 2,000 films a year in 37 languages, and yet 70% of this heritage is already gone up in smoke ", laments Shivendra Singh. So many testimonies of the transformations of Indian society and the history of cinema since the 1920s lost forever.
Under the leadership of this former producer and many enthusiasts, the situation is starting to change. After Bombay, Calcutta, Madras and Pune, Shivendra Singh is organizing for the 5th year a festival for the preservation of Indian film, in the city of Hyderabad. Objective: to train the new generation in the restoration and archiving of the immense cinematographic memory of the subcontinent. The best experts are gathered for a week of lectures and courses in the Annapurna studios , directed by the legendary Indian actor Akkineni Nagarjuna, whose father was also the star of the big screen.
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" One day, I wanted to find my father's classics and I discovered that most of the films had been destroyed over time, " says the star. " That's how I opened my eyes, " says Nagarjuna. He is not the only actor to support the NGO: the Bollywood legend, Amitabh Bachchan, and even Martin Scorsese prepared a video speech for the opening of the festival. The legendary American director is one of the supporters of the Film Heritage Foundation, as is the International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF).
Film makers
Throughout the workshops, we come across film craftsmen with unsuspected knowledge. Tiago Ganhão, from Cinemateca Portuguesa , specializes in the identification of reels: " Many different types of film were used in the 20th century," he explains . When you come across a reel, you still need to know its components to hope to restore it. With the help of scissors and glue, Marianna de Sanctis glues the films, some of the images of which have been torn. At the other end of the chain, Manuel Götz represents Arri, a German company that digitizes old reels. " It takes up to 30 hours to scan a damaged film ," he insists.
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If the panel is international, it is because India lacks such specialists, like many other countries in the region. Tamanna Faqirzada came from Kabul. “ Afghan culture has been ravaged by the Taliban. At the risk of their lives, archivists have managed to conceal films of their destructive madness. But we do not have the skills to restore these treasures. Former president of the Asia-Pacific Audiovisual Archive Association , the Australian Mick Newnham shares his adventures as a " reel hunter ". “ We found film from the Vietnam War. To save them, filmmakers had sacrificed their rice ration to absorb the moisture. "
Technological race
The enthusiasm of the president of the Film Heritage Foundation Shivendra Singh is communicative. “ In five years, we have successfully trained the Indians in restoration. We now want to build the first living image conservatory in India ”. However, nothing is played for the memory of the cinema of the subcontinent. " The awareness of the problem and the skills now exist , judge Etienne Marchand, multimedia engineer at the French National Audiovisual Institute. But the Indian heritage is much more important than ours, while the means are much more limited and depend on patrons. "
Digital often works as a quick fix. “ I first said to myself that I had all my films in digital format, recalls the star Akkineni Nagarjuna. But even these files must be kept somewhere. And they don't have the quality of 24,000 pixel film. Étienne Marchand adds: " There is not one, but digital formats. We must monitor their development for old films as well as new ones. "
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This is the paradox: if cinema is the most popular art in the world, its conservation is a victim of the proliferation of its production and its incessant technological evolution. The explosion of smartphones and videos on social networks will only exacerbate the problem. In India as elsewhere, the archaeologists of the seventh art will always run after history.