archive of india nfai and after seeing the dilapidated condition of the films there i felt the need to do something for themhow bad were the conditions of the film reels in the national film archive of india and was that visit an inspiration behind your documentary celluloid manfilm reels need to be stored in controlled environments but the conditions under which they are kept at the archive were far from ideal there was no temperature control and no one looking after them they were just lying everywhere abandoned it was a disheartening sight to see especially the gems which nair saheb had painstakingly collected over the years for instance i discovered that the reel of indias first talkie alam ara 1931 wasnt there later i learnt that it was sold off by the producer ardeshir iranis son himself to extract silver from the reels the tragedies were manifold and i felt that this tragic story of indian cinema must be toldi felt that this has to change and nair sahebs legacy needs to be taken forward so i came up with celluloid man as a tribute to him and later established the film heritage foundation in 2014 how much of our film heritage have we lost is there a way to restore themthe journey of indian cinema began with the release of dadasaheb phalkes raja harishchandra on may 3 1913 it was released as a fourreel film 3700feetlong phalke had advertised the film as a performance with 57000 photographs a picture two miles long all for three annas today only one mile of that gem remains close to 1700 silent films were made in india of which the nfai have only five to six complete films and approximately 10 to 12 films in fragments the film industry in madras made 124 films and 38 documentaries in the silent era of which only one film survives marthanda verma 1931 even the first telugu talkie bhakta prahlad 1932 made by the pioneer hm reddy is lost by 1950 india had lost 70 to 80 per cent of our films in fact we dont have to go back so far eminent filmmakers of the modern era such as gulzar and mani ratnam too have lost original negatives of their films but of late there has been a silver lining a few years ago the george eastman museum in rochester new york had approached me to help preserve the film print of ss rajamoulis magadheera at the archive and i had coordinated with producer allu arvind to send the print to new york we first need to save what is left and have a preservation plan for the films we continue to produce before we can move on to restoration what do you think is the reason behind us losing most of our film heritage do you think filmmakers are to be blamed for this its disheartening that our filmmakers only value their films as long as they make money