Film Preservation & Restoration Workshop India 2024

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM:
The 9th edition of the Film Preservation & Restoration Workshop India 2024 (FPRWI 2024) will be held from November 7 – 14, 2024 in Thiruvananthanpuram. The Film Heritage Foundation (FHF) is organising the programme in association with the International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF).

The workshop will be held at Vyloppilly Samskrithi Bhavan Multi Purpose Cultural Complex under the Department of Culture, Government of Kerala.

The seven-day workshop, open to applicants from all over the world, will cover the complete range of the issues and topics required to work in the field of audio-visual preservation. An international faculty of experts in the field will give the training.

Experts from premier institutes to lead classes
The curriculum will include both lectures and hands-on sessions on film, video, audio and digital preservation, film conservation and restoration, digitization, disaster recovery, cataloguing, paper and photograph conservation, programming, among others. Classes will be followed by daily evening screenings of restored films from around the world. The faculty include exerts from premier institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, British Film Institute, L’Immagine Ritrovata, Bologna, Institute National de l’Audiovisuel, Fondation Jérôme Seydoux – Pathé and Cineteca Portuguesa.

Over 400 participants have been trained in the previous editions of the workshop conducted in a travelling school format in different parts of the country since 2015. Over the years, the programme has created a movement for film preservation in India and the subcontinent.

The target audience for the workshop are junior level film archive staff, audio-visual professionals wishing to learn about archiving, students studying media and related topics and individuals with a keen interest in audio-visual archiving. Participants will receive a certificate from FIAF on completion of the course.

Additionally, participants can become a part of a collaborative network of like-minded media archivists committed to the cause of preserving their cultural heritage.

Kamal Haasan urges to apply
Legendary actor-filmmaker Kamal Haasan, who is the advisor to FHF, has urged people who care about the future of our film heritage to apply for FPRWI 2024.

“This unique and much-needed training initiative has created awareness about the urgent need to preserve our film heritage, while training a resource of film archivists to take up this challenge not just in India, but around the world. The world has lost a vast amount of our film heritage and we need an army of archivists to preserve our cinematic legacy and also work to save the films of today and tomorrow,” he said in a video message.

Those who wish to participate in the programme can download the application form and get details from the website http://filmheritagefoundation.co.in/film-preservation-restoration-workshop-india-2024/

Those who are not able to download the application form due to any technical reasons may access it from FIAF website or by sending a request email to: fprwi2024@gmail.com

The deadline for submitting the application form: Wednesday, September 25, 2024.

Some of most remarkable pictures I’ve seen are from Kerala: Scorsese

Eminent filmmaker Martin Scorsese, the founder and chair of the Film Foundation expressed happiness over Kerala hosting the event. “Some of the most remarkable pictures I’ve seen have come out of Kerala, whose cinematic heritage includes the work of Adoor Gopalakrishnan and Aravindan Govindan. The World Cinema Project, an arm of The Film Foundation devoted to the restoration, preservation and dissemination of films from around the world, recently restored two of Govindan’s films, Kummatty and Thamp, in partnership with Film Heritage Foundation,” he said.

Film Heritage Foundation’s founder and archivist Shivendra Singh Dungarpur said they always wanted to conduct our annual film preservation workshop in Kerala as it is the home of some of the finest cinema that has been produced in India over the years.

“It is a state that has a deep love for cinema and two major film institutions, the Kerala State Chalachitra Academy and the Kerala State Film Development Corporation, but sadly it does not have a film archive to preserve its incredible film heritage. We realized the situation was dire when we had so much difficulty finding surviving film elements in decent condition to work with when we restored Aravindan’s Thamp and Kummatty and continue to face the same issue as we embark on the restoration of John Abraham’s Amma Ariyan. We found that so many films were lost and many others were deteriorating due to neglect and lack of knowledge about preservation techniques.

“Kerala’s rich film heritage is in danger of vanishing if we don’t take urgent steps to preserve it. I am glad that Film Heritage Foundation in association with FIAF will be conducting the 9th edition of the Film Preservation & Restoration Workshop India in Thiruvananthapuram this November. Kerala should have its own state film archive to preserve Malayalam film heritage and we hope that through the training and exposure to the best practices of film preservation at the workshop, we will be able to set this process in motion.

I have such a close association with Kerala myself. I have been a great admirer of Malayalam cinema having watched the films of auteurs like Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Aravindan, John Abraham, Bharathan, K.G. George, Shaji Karun and P. Padmarajan when I was a student at the Film Institute in Pune. In 1994, I shot for my first feature film in Alappuzha inspired by a location I saw in a Bharathan film and Fazil gave the clap for the first shot of the film. I have worked with most of the acclaimed cinematographers from Kerala—Venu, Santosh Thundiyil, K. U. Mohanan, Rajeev Ravi and Ravi K. Chandran. Later I returned to shoot parts of my film “Celluloid Man” in Thiruvananthapuram at the home of P.K. Nair, Sankhumugham Beach and Sree Padmanabha Theatre and have travelled to Thiruvananthapuram several times for the International Film Festival of Kerala. I wish that my mentor, the legendary film archivist, the late P.K. Nair, could have been here to be a part of this workshop in his hometown, a training programme focused on film preservation that he dedicated his life to,” he said.

Film preservation about future: Bachchan
Legendary Bollywood actor Amitabh Bachchan, the cause ambassador of Film Heritage Foundation said: “I am so pleased that this year we are bringing the 9th edition of the Film Preservation & Restoration Workshop India to Thiruvananthapuram, to sow the seeds of a film preservation movement in Kerala, which despite its incredibly rich and artistic cinematic legacy, does not have an archive to preserve their precious film heritage. As Malayalam cinema continues to make waves around the world, I hope that the film fraternity, cinephiles and the government will remember that film preservation is about the future – saving yesterday and today’s films for tomorrow – and that this workshop holds the key to that door to the future.”

Time to test digital film’s longevity: Adoor
Renowned filmmaker Adoor Gopalakrishnan said: “It is proven that the optical film has survived for more than a century and beyond under controlled humidity and heat. The digital film’s longevity is a matter of faith and belief yet to be verified by real experience over a length of time. Those who wish a longer life for their films should have them transferred to celluloid scientifically, using modern methods of preservation. The workshop planned will equip and empower the motivated.”