shivendra singh dungarpurs documentary celluloid man on film archivist pk nair created a buzz at the recent bengaluru international film festival dungarpur short films and documentary filmmaker and an archivist himself underlines the need to preserve all films as the culture of preservation is not strong ironically in a moviemad nation like ours excerptshow did celluloid man happen i had read an interview with the celebrated american director martin scorsese about the il cinema ritrovato festival in bologna italy where they screened restored films i was fascinated by this and attended the festival this inspired me to meet nair saheb in pune who had retired but continued to live just outside the national film archive a recluse almost forgotten this meeting brought back all the old memories of the time i spent at the film and television institute of india pune when nair saheb would show us so many wonderful films thanks to him we began to love and live for films i took him to see the vault at the archive what we realized was that the films were kept in wrong conditions the temperatures were not right and there was nobody to look after the films i felt i had to do something to preserve our cinematic heritage and nair sahebs legacywhat was the audience response to it at the bangalore film festival celluloid man premiered at the il cinema ritrovato festival in bologna in june 2012 since then its been shown at many festivals by the time the film arrived in bangalore expectations were high there was a lot of interest especially as it was also shot in bangalore and heggodu the film features ur ananthamurthy girish kasaravalli girish karnad and narahari rao of suchitra film society we had a tremendous response from the audiencewhat does the future hold for documentaries in india can they hope for commercial release the fact that celluloid man got such a good response and that the film will be released commercially gives me hope also a film like superman of malegaon was released and found success ive always believed theres an audience for documentaries they have not been given a platformyouve helped martin scorsese restore uday shankars kalpana and the british film institute restore alfred hitchcocks the lodger a story of the london fog how much of our cinema has been preserved of the films made before 1950 in india almost 70 to 80 do not exist our first talkie alam ara 1931 does not exist our filmmakers never cared for what they created the fact that 1700 silent films were made in india of which only 10 to 12 remain speaks for itself it is only when nair stepped into the archive in 1964 that we started preserving films most black and white films were destroyed to extract silver while colour films were converted to coloured bangleswhat exactly do you do when you say youre involved in restoration and preservation of films is digital processing better than