We lost films as fast as we made them: Mani Ratnam

“We lost our films as fast as we made them,“ said veteran film director Mani Ratnam on Saturday, launching the Film Preservation & Restoration Workshop India at the Prasad Film Lab, Vadapalani

The acclaimed filmmaker was speaking about the alarming rate at which negatives of films, made over the last century, were disappearing due to lack of knowledge about preservation.“Cinema is the new art form.It encompasses several other art forms like music, drama, theatre and folk art.With film being a new art form, we went about it like a kid in the candy store and produced a large number of them.“

During the silent fim era, the industry in Madras produced 124 films and 38 documentaries, of which only Malayalam film `Marthanda Verma'(1931) remains. Film Heritage Foundation founder Shivendra Singh Dungarpur, who organised the workshop here, called for it to be termed a “national cultural emergency“, given the rate at which films are being lost.

In a message read out at the launch, Amitabh Bachnan said, “The moment has come when we have to treat every last moving image as reverently and respectfully as if it were the oldest book in the library. After all, like books, films have the ability to tell us who we are.“

During the workshop, which will be on till October 14, 52 participants will train in film repair, poster and photographic conservation, film scanning, colour correction and sound restoration and work alongside technicians at the AVM Lab, the last surviving black and white film processing lab in the country.

The workshop will be conducted by 20 faculty members from L'Immagine Ritrovata (Italy), The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, La Cinematheque Francaise, Imperial War Museums, Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna, The Criterion Collection, The Finnish Film Archive and the Czech National Archive.