Celluloid Man

Celluloid Man is a documentary on a lover of film. This should be enough to convince you to watch this film. I hope it is. If not, read on.

P.K. Nair is a widely respected film archivist and scholar. The film is a collection of anecdotes and nostalgic remembrances of the man. There are even some exaggerated pieces of imagination or honest confessions. It shows him and the people who have learned under him speaking about his expansive love for the movies. Be it recent filmmakers like Rajkumar Hirani or respected stalwarts like Gulzar and Mahesh Bhatt. Actors ranging from Naseeruddin Shah to Jaya Bachchan got an introduction to world cinema through him. I was surprised to learn Jaya Bachchan was a devoted student of cinema.

I’m embarrassed to admit how little I knew of him. I knew what Henri Langlois and Martin Scorsese are to film archiving and film preservation but who was Mr. Nair? I had almost no clue. I am a part of the problem this documentary addresses. We have, time and again, failed to acknowledge our own and obsess over foreign triumphs. There is nothing wrong with knowing more about world cinema, if only we don’t ignore our own. What I loved about Mr. Nair’s personality is how he treated every film as a piece of history. It may be a C-grade film but in a few decades, it will be as valuable as a masterpiece since both are a historical document. This attitude of an enlightened cineaste is rare to find. Almost extinct. Everybody is a film “buff” these days (how I hate that term), hardly any who know movies. Not loving movies, that is easy to do. Knowing them is the tricky part.

My favorite segment is when a group of villagers in Heggodu share that they have seen Rashomon (1950) and Bicycle Thieves (1948) due to the efforts of Satish Bahadur (who brought these prints to be screened in villages). They think they were extremely lucky, I wonder if people today would feel so. When I came out of film school, one of my favorite hobbies was to introduce Kurosawa or Truffaut to non-film students (Bergman or Tarkovsky would be pushing it).

After a few years, I had stopped doing that because I dishearteningly gathered that nobody really cares. I’m glad I saw Celluloid Man because I understood that this didn’t stop Mr. Nair. The next generation is what matters. I’m going to actively re-start inspiring the people I know to watch movies which are important. Film preservation in cans is one thing, preservation in memory is more important. As Scorsese said, we may not have the same memories of our lives but film can serve as a collective memory and hence become cultural heritage. This needs to be passed on.

When I saw the clip of the ending of Meghe Dhaka Tara (1960) here, Nita’s cry of ‘I want to live’ sounded like films crying out and not wanting to die out in time. Worse, forgotten. The film isn’t a mournful tribute to cinema, if I’m giving that impression. There are several clips from movies which illustrate the joy of cinema. A song sequence with a young Ashok Kumar in Achhut Kanya (1936). Song sequences from Chandralekha (1948) and Kalpana (1948) are stunning. The logos of now-shut-down production houses. The title cards which announce the end of a film or the now-extinct ‘Samaapt’. It's pure nostalgia.

I can safely say Celluloid Man is the best Indian documentary I have ever seen. The reason is one man – P.K. Nair. Why? Because he knows and loves movies, we need men like that. The importance of loving movies as art must be recognized. P.K. Nair reminded me mostly of Martin Scorsese. His two brilliant documentaries - A Personal Joureny Through The American Movies (1995) and My Voyage to Italy (2001). His recent masterpiece Hugo (2011) was about a boy who saves a lost filmmaker’s work and restores his faith in life. P.K. Nair is Hugo. It’s affirming to know that there are real life Hugos out there, him and the man who made this documentary.

For Shivendra Singh Dungarpur, I only have gratitude. Thank you for making this film.

It is somewhere towards the end of Celluloid Man that a farmer from Heggodu, Karnataka marvels about the travelling cinema/film appreciation experience they were exposed to courtesy Nair (our  Celluloid Man) and his colleagues. The man responsible for India’s National Film Archive brought them Bergman, Kurosawa, Pather Panchali, he gushes. Imagine the world cinema we could watch in Heggodu, he finds it incredulous himself. Well, Indian, he quickly corrects himself, that one Pather Panchali is from here. But as he shrugs his shoulders, we realize that this may be no slip of the tongue. For us (our celluloid) past is another country; and if it was not for P.K. Nair, it would have been further still.

Nair, film archivist, the “preserver of butterflies” as one of the interviewees introduces his ilk—had taken upon himself to capture and protect something as ethereal and beautiful as the flickering film image. His journey begins from collecting the stubs of ‘floor tickets’ of movies he watched sitting in tent cinemas; he considers it an auspicious beginning, the shimmering white sand of Kerala at his feet a propitious kolam. That he is a man committed to preserving world cinema for India is obvious as the documentary unfolds. A colleague refers to Nair’s eccentric lifestyle with the ubiquitous lines of how he is a man living, dreaming, eating films. He was drinking films, he adds helpfully and the audience titters. But I don’t think anyone is laughing as we see Nair returning to the film archives he had set up (At one time in the documentary Dungarpur is heard asking why it took the National Film Archives of India eleven months to give permission to shoot with Nair in the archive premises. His request is evaded with a comment on Nair’s eccentric work habits). We see Nair walking through his former office turned godown, through corridors where films now come to die. As the camera cuts to images of film cans corroding under the open skies, a voice behind the camera speaks of the film archives being India’s children and our responsibility towards them. Spine chilling, if I were to conflate these words with the newspaper headlines this week.

Why should you watch this documentary? You must for the same reason why Nair pleads for an archive of our adventures with celluloid. Films tell a tale of us. The way we were, cinema and this particular documentary is a time capsule about what we ate, what we wore, what we watched. Has humor changed? And what hasn’t and enraptures us still?

They say a particular generation burnt their khimkhwab brocade for the gold thread that stayed behind, and a tapestry of time was lost to us forever. Watch yourself cringe when you hear what happens to film reels from Imperial Studios courtesy an impetuous decision on the part of Sapore Irani. Celluloid Man introduces you to a world of intrigue, of film reels being surreptiously exchanged, of unlikely friendships struck over our passion for films, and it will change the way you hear the word “dupe” forever.

If you have seen the promotion material for Celluloid Man you will know that it shares candid interviews with the Who’s Who (and some more) of Indian cinema. It is not all Nair the archivist when they speak to the camera, somewhere amongst these candid exchanges slips in stories about our story makers. So you will know that Guddi was always a good student, discover what made Sanjeev Kumar move mom and baggage to Pune for a month, and why it was not church that had a certain generation of FTII goers waking up early Sunday morning.

And that Dungarpur shoots Celluloid Man in 16mm film is the sweetest hat tip of all. Watch the documentary to understand why.

The most heartening moment for me while watching celluloid man was to see a couple who had come with their two kids to watch the life of P.K.Nair.  In times like these when parents take their children to all the possible wrong movies, this visual was like a breath of fresh air.

If you are a movie buff you do not require a review to watch celluloid man. Stop reading, and park yourself in the almost empty theatre. The empty seats were calling out to cinema lovers.  For the others who wonder who is this P.K.Nair . Well, He is the founder of national film archive. Thanks to him some of our cinema history has been preserved.  

The documentary is a look back at his life and his work told by him and pieced together through interviews of various film personalities who in some way or the other were influenced by him.  

Like most of the documentaries in India this too is narrated in a morose and boring style. This style of narration is fine by me because along with getting to know about the man this film gives me an opportunity to look at certain old movie clips that can be termed rare. But the direction and duration of this documentary will keep many a viewers away from watching it.  A shorter version for theatrical release would have helped the film find its audience.  The thing which I loved the most was the segment about the farmers of a small village ion Karnataka talking about rashomon and bicycle thieves..

Word of mouth - it is a must watch for cinema lovers. For the rest, go with an open mind and lots of patience and you will come out enriched and in awe of P.K.Nair

Rating - ****

Ticket Meter – worth the price of a ticket

Celluloid Man, directed by Shivender Singh Dungarpur has already travelled as many as 24 film international festivals to much acclaim. But despite the global accolades, it is seeing only a subdued release in India. According to the director, the exhibitors who promised him generous shows at one point have backed off, reducing it to a meager 3 shows a day. It’s a painful irony that a film that documents the history and evolution of Indian cinema, scratch by scratch, doesn’t get a robust platform for the information to be adequately dispensed within its home-country.

Celluloid Man is a heartening documentary made with a lot of love. It tells the story of PK Nair, a man who came to Mumbai with the intention of being a filmmaker, but later joined the FTII’s archives department and went on to become an unrivaled conserver of cinema, probably the only force who single-handedly created a film heritage in a country that doesn’t value its cinematic culture. The documentary, with the help of interviews with renowned film directors, actors and technicians, many of them who are alumni of the FTII, shows the meticulous efforts Nair invested in founding the National Film Archive of India. His obsessive love for cinema makes him the undisputed king of the film fandom. His enormous knowledge and concern for film preservation and restoration reveals a rare entity who became a silent guardian of our cinematic history. Without him, scores of reels would have been permanently lost in the dungeons of oblivion and this includes works of Dadasaheb Phalke as well.

However, in saluting PK Nair, one must not overlook the efforts of director Shivendra Singh Dungarpur and his team, who have tracked down with utmost precision, the complex history of our cinema with Nair as the superstar at the center. It is also a very skillfully made documentary, and one doesn’t mind it’s long running hours as there are so many invaluable lessons that are directed towards the viewer. Right from anecdotes of the temperamental Ghatak who famously disapproved many of Ray’ films, to how a copy of Hitchcock’s Blackmail was secured from the British Film Archive in exchange of Sant Tukaram, the film overflows with intricacies of an intriguing industry and its various mechanisms which we wouldn’t otherwise pay too much attention to.

It’s got some spectacular black-and-white shots filmed inside movie-theatres which inspire tear-soaked nostalgia. Reels of films play in the background even as Nair talks of his struggle to become the ultimate custodian of cinema. It’s truly fascinating as after a point, Celluloid Man becomes so immersive that the nature of the film overlaps with the form itself becoming a kaleidoscopic celebration of the art and craft of film itself. Like a historic film on the history of films. Beautiful is the experience which cannot be described in any other form but the one it is originally in: film.

We see, how in his elaborate tenure as the archivist, Nair’s devotion matched with encyclopedic knowledge of world cinema benefitted not only students of the institute like Vidhu Vinod Chopra, Jaya Bachchan and Mahesh Bhatt, but people as indigenous as nut farmers in the far-flung regions of South India.

Celluloid Man is an important film that not just rewards the legacy of PK Nair with the reverence that it deserves, but stresses on the urgent need of having the required logistics and sustainable infrastructure for film preservation, restoration and the necessity to develop a culture which values cinema not only for its tentative gain, but also for its long-term incentives.