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First Indian film museum in 2013: Ambika Soni

New Delhi: The Indian government aims to complete work on the country`s first film musuem by 2013, which marks centenary of the Indian film industry, Union Minister of Information and Broadcasting, Ambika Soni said at the 58th National Film Awards ceremony here Friday.


India`s first feature film "Raja Harishchandra", a silent film, released in 1913.

"The national museum of Indian cinema, a first-of-its-kind, that will showcase the evolution of Indian cinema, is being built in Mumbai and I hope it will be ready to be inaugrated in the centenary year of 2013," said Soni, while addressing the gathering at the Vigyan Bhawan before President Pratibha Patil gave away the awards.

A large number of dignitaries from the Indian film industry were present on the occasion.

Talking about the plans for the musuem, Soni said: "Three thousand films will be acquired and digitised, and another 3,000 will be restored and transferred into negatives, which will be available at the affordable rates on DVDs for the public."

The musuem will be a window to India`s ever-expanding soft power, cinema.

"It (the century) is the milestone in our cinematic journey and will provide us with excellent opportunity to exhibit India`s soft power and reinforce the idea of Indian cinema and incredible India campaign," she said.

"Films all over the world have been a powerful tool for globalisation and filmmaking has emerged as the strongest force for the global audience," she added.

Pity they left it too late. So much has been destroyed by the climate conditions, incorrect storage, independent production and and a recent years major vault fire in a government archive that lost countless important but unrestored films. Of course a fire at Hendersons Film labs in UK lost the original camera negatives of The Apu Trilogy that was being restored along with a lot Ealing originals stored there. Materials had to come from USA & elsewhere and I believe the work was done in USA after that. My own collection of Indian films in DVD is large and this being the fact that a large Indian population lives here now they sell these films, often pirates and three to a disc!!!!, in their shops whether Indian grocery stores or food shops where DVD stock sits with the vats used to make their food. I shudder at the thought of what all that heat is making to those discs.

Most of what I have is in the Hindi language with little in other of the many subcontinent languages. They have English subtitles, 5.1 sound often and besides the Censorship card(like older British films) these films usually have English title cards and musical extras. I got hold of some of the 50s classics but so much came available a decade ago I could not keep up but there were series grouping famous Indian/Hind-language directors of the period such as Bimal Roy who produced a classic called Two Acres of Land, a film I had at home for borrow(16mm) in the mid-1970s and waited eagerly for the DVD which I got. A film I enjoyed. I also have the reputed first Indian color feature, Mother India. Before I got this one I went with a friend to an area with lots of Indian shops and lots of DVDs and they all said they knew the film but none had it but I soon got it. It is one of the many thousands of DVDs I have, but one that I can get out in jiffy, if needs be. Not easy when one has little room and a large collection!!!!

An interesting point is that many Indian films have copious musical sequences, often unrelated to the film, with pretty girls dancing about and singing but the singers are all dubbed and there is squad of ladies & men who work dubbing the songs who look nothing like the beauties seen on screen.

The two best known recent years Indian films(outside India) are Salaam Bombay & Monsoon Wedding, outside of the earlier Apu Trilogy.

Many of these films have sentences in part English and a few naughty words. Heavy censorship has meant sex had been suppressed but some of the replacement scenes to me have been quite funny and just as sexy, if you like. Heavy kissing was one area that was banned.

In a country that seems to have magazines come and go by the hundreds each year, or even each month, there must have been countless film magazines come & go over the decades.

I wish them luck even if it is late in the day compared to many other countries.