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rana
PostPosted: Wed Jan 08, 2003 9:15 pm 
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http://www.hinduonnet.com/stories/2003010904890100.htm



Some excerpts:

Fire in FTII destroys old films

Pune Jan. 8. A major fire broke out in the premier Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) here today destroying a large number of original copies of popular black and white films of the 50's, regarded as the golden era of Indian cinema.

The Prabhat Film studio, which is housed in the FTII, was also damaged in the fire.

Negatives of hundreds of films were stored at the National film Archives of India building in the campus of the Institute. Most of the films were released in the 1950's.
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DragunR2
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PostPosted: Wed Jan 08, 2003 9:52 pm 
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That's terrible. A few years ago, a fire broke out in an archive in London, destroying the negatives to some of Satyajit Ray's films. I'm sure a lot of these early films were on flammable nitrate stock, helping their demise.
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Zoran009
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PostPosted: Wed Jan 08, 2003 11:39 pm 
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I wonder, when EROS ka GODOWN will be on fire too???
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darius25
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PostPosted: Wed Jan 08, 2003 11:45 pm 
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arsh wrote:
I wonder, when EROS ka GODOWN will be on fire too???

friggin hillarious!!! :D :D :D :D :thumbs:
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raj
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PostPosted: Thu Jan 09, 2003 1:41 am 
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This is very bad.... news...
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congress
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PostPosted: Thu Jan 09, 2003 8:18 am 
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[quote="DragunR2"][/quote]
What better reason to transfer movies onto dvd properly and preserve them than this. But I guess dvd makers are not exactly movie lovers...
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DragunR2
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PostPosted: Fri Jan 10, 2003 12:07 am 
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congress wrote:
DragunR2 wrote:

What better reason to transfer movies onto dvd properly and preserve them than this. But I guess dvd makers are not exactly movie lovers...

The problem is, the infrastructure is not like in Hollywood. American studios own the rights to their films, as well as the original elements if they exist. They also release their own product on home video. Rightholders to Indian films have typically leased them to a separate video company in the past.

The advent of TV provided a source of income to the studios for older films, which was one push for film preservation and restoration. Video was another major push. Probably every major studio has a major temperature-controlled archive now. Major figures in Hollywood such as Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, and Steven Spielberg have donated money to restoration of films. Coppola produced the reconstruction to Napoleon, a 4 hour French silent film, in the 1980s. I don't know of Yash Chopra or Subhash Ghai funding any restoration projects, which disappoints me, considering that YRF owns a considerable amount of classics, such as the Raj Kapoor and Guru Dutt films.

Of course, not every film can be preserved. The big hits and the important films should be preserved first, but this is an expensive and time consuming task. I wish they would at least do video restorations to produce decent video and DVD versions of old films, like Criterion does.

TCM aired a good documentary on film preservation/restoration called "The Race to Save 100 Years" a few years ago. I don't know if it is on video/DVD, but I recorded it.
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congress
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PostPosted: Fri Jan 10, 2003 8:24 am 
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DragunR2 wrote:
The problem is, the infrastructure is not like in Hollywood. American studios own the rights to their films, as well as the original elements if they exist. They also release their own product on home video. Rightholders to Indian films have typically leased them to a separate video company in the past.

As I have mentioned before dvd makers are not exactly movie lovers...Francis Ford Coppola and Steven Spielberg are all driven by the love of cinema but people like Subash Ghai and Yash Chopra are not exactly the same. Their new films produced by their own company are terrible so preserving old films are out of the question.

DEI was not exactly a very big company but they had some sense of quality control at least when it came to dvd making unlike Eros or Super Digital. I am not asking for a criterion dvd from Indian dvd makers but a certain level of professionalism. So Indian dvd companies don't really have to be a major player like Hollywood studios.

Actually in India the TV market is very big but not properly exploited. I hope NFDC could have done some preservation but I bet they don't even have proper electricity so at the end of the day, yes infrastrcture is a major problem.
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mhafner
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PostPosted: Fri Jan 10, 2003 3:49 pm 
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DragunR2 wrote:
congress wrote:
DragunR2 wrote:

What better reason to transfer movies onto dvd properly and preserve them than this. But I guess dvd makers are not exactly movie lovers...

The problem is, the infrastructure is not like in Hollywood. American studios own the rights to their films, as well as the original elements if they exist. They also release their own product on home video. Rightholders to Indian films have typically leased them to a separate video company in the past.

The advent of TV provided a source of income to the studios for older films, which was one push for film preservation and restoration. Video was another major push. Probably every major studio has a major temperature-controlled archive now. Major figures in Hollywood such as Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, and Steven Spielberg have donated money to restoration of films. Coppola produced the reconstruction to Napoleon, a 4 hour French silent film, in the 1980s. I don't know of Yash Chopra or Subhash Ghai funding any restoration projects, which disappoints me, considering that YRF owns a considerable amount of classics, such as the Raj Kapoor and Guru Dutt films.

Of course, not every film can be preserved. The big hits and the important films should be preserved first, but this is an expensive and time consuming task. I wish they would at least do video restorations to produce decent video and DVD versions of old films, like Criterion does.

TCM aired a good documentary on film preservation/restoration called "The Race to Save 100 Years" a few years ago. I don't know if it is on video/DVD, but I recorded it.

The attitude in Hollywood was the same 50 years ago, Then
came TV and later on home video and suddenly old films were
again worth 'something'. Since ~20 years Hollywood is aware
of the issue and putting money into it. India is just
where Hollywood was in the 50s. Let's hope they don't
need 50 years too to learn the lesson.
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DragunR2
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PostPosted: Fri Jan 10, 2003 8:33 pm 
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If TV had hit India in the 50s like it did America, perhaps the older films that exist would be better preserved by the businessmen running the studios, seeing a new venue for old films. Film preservation in America exists basically because it was seen as a good business move, but it is expensive. I've heard of prints in India being recycled into handbags and other things in the past. This is not worse than what American studios did with their films pre-50s.
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