51,500 films missing from Indian National Film Archives

As many as 51,500 film cans have gone missing from the National Film Archive of India (NFAI), which claims to have 1.3 lakh film reels in its vaults, according to a report in Indian Express.

A Pune-based private firm, Cameo Digital Systems Pvt Ltd, which was given the task of bar-coding all the reels in the possession of NFAI in 2012, found that 51,500 cans of film reels and over 9,200 prints “were not physically present” at the archives. Additionally, “4,922 cans containing 1,112 film titles, which are not listed in the NFAI's registers, were present in its vaults”.

The 'missing films list' includes a number of historically and culturally important films. The films include those made by Satyajit Ray – “Pather Panchali”, its sequel “Aparajito”, and “Charulata”, Mehboob Khan's “Mother India”, Raj Kapoor's “Mera Naam Joker” and “Awaara”, Mrinal Sen “Bhuvan Shome”, Guru Dutt's “Kaagaz ke Phool” and several other giants of Indian cinema, the report adds.

And it's not just films made by Indian directorsl; several international films have also gone missing. These include works of Sergei Eisenstein (“Battleship Potemkin”), Vittorio De Sica (“Bicycle Thieves” aka “The Bicycle Thief”), Akira Kurosawa (“Seven Samurai”), Roman Polanski (“Knife in the Water”) and Andrzej Wajda (“Ashes and Diamonds”).

National and international films from the silent era too are in the list.

Apart from films, footage from real historical events from pre-Independence India have also disappeared. These include Mahatma Gandhi's visit to Paris, the Indian National Congress's Karachi congregation and US president Richard Nixon's address during his visit to India 1969.