Better late than never goes the English adage. Hence Film Heritage Foundation India, deserves kudos for eventually taking up the brilliant task of restoring and preserving India’s cinematic heritage.
The man behind the mission is Shivendra Singh Dungarpur, an award-winning filmmaker, producer, film archivist and restorer. Following a successful career as a maker of ad-films and documentaries, he has established the Film Heritage Foundation in 2014.
Film Heritage Foundation has teamed up with Hollywood director Martin Scorsese’s The Film Foundation, acclaimed film preservationist and a film restoration laboratory based in Italy, which is set to launch India’s first film restoration school.
The mission of film restoration and preservation of India’s Film Archive has been ably supported by Viacom18 Media Pvt Ltd. To create awareness about the project a week long workshop from February 22 to 28 has been organized at Film Davison, Mumbai.
To give a boost to the event the organizers have employed Amitabh Bachchan as the Brand Ambassador for promoting the importance of preservation of India’s Film Archive.
Amitabh Bachchan, who inaugurated the workshop on Sunday, praising the event said, “I applaud Film Heritage Foundation for their righteous notion for preserving India’s Film Archive. It is truly a most sincere effort to archive all the films made through the years. It is a daunting task as most of our films have got destroyed or lost, due to no archival interest or work.”
Speaking about the workshop Shivendra Singh Dungarpur told media, “We have lost a colossal amount of our film heritage and we continue to lose some everyday. Most film laboratories have shut down their photochemical facilities that are essential for doing a quality restoration. Hence we are in danger of losing the original camera negatives of countless landmark Indian films if they are not restored on an urgent basis.”
“The aim of the school is to create passionate future archivists,” concludes Dungarpur.
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