The Quint: Pune: Wednesday, September 13, 2017.
The National
Film Archive of India in Pune has more that 1,100 films contained in 14,950
reels, rotting inside 1,202 gunny bags that can never be viewed again, Indian
Express reported.
In a reply to
an RTI accessed by the daily, it was revealed that 17, 595 such reels were
found in gunny bag, out of which only 2,645 were found to be in “runnable
conditions”. Even the reels that were in working conditions were dumped in
gunny bags for several months before being store in temperature controlled
rooms.
These reels
don’t have a proper record of their titles, but director of NFAI, Prakash
Magdum, claimed otherwise.
These film
reels were assessed, segregated and securely packed after rigorous in-house
assessment activity of nearly three months in 2015. The titles thus have been
identified, with multiple copies, in some cases almost 10 to 12 copies of a
film. The material in good condition has been identified and put in plastic
cans and stored.
Prakash
Magdum, director of NFAI.
But, in
September 2016, only 3,000 reels had multiple copies.
Moreover, the
preservation of reels wasn’t discussed in any of the five meetings conducted by
the high-level committee headed by the Secretary of the I&B Ministry.
It is not
just reels that has been badly preserved by the NFAI. Posters, film scripts,
and newspaper clippings have been tied in bundles and are gathering dust.
However,
Magnum maintained that some of the archived paper has become brittle not
because of being kept in a poor condition but because of the aged material.
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