The filmmaker and film preservationist Shivendra Singh Dungarpur (who, according to his IMDB page, also belongs to the former royal family of Dungarpur State in Rajasthan, India) fell in love with Jirí Menzel’s Czech new wave classic Closely Observed Trains (a.k.a. Closely Followed Trains) back when he was a film student. He longed to meet the man behind this wonderful film and many years later his dream came true.Read More »
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A short excerpt from the booklet essay by Mark Cousins.
India’s is partially an oral culture, many of the great stories are preserved in people’s memories, but Celluloid Man shows that, in the movie world, Nair wanted to change that. He wanted to make a physical memory bank, a depository of film prints, a place you had to cool and dust. It’s the physicality of his story that is striking: the long taxi rides to the relatives of Phalke, the country’s first feature director, to see if they have any rolls of film in their home; the bang on the door at 3am because a filmmaker must see Pasolini’s The Gospel According to Matthew there and then; the stripping of miles of 35mm negatives to harvest their silver to make jewellery. It’s a pre-digital epic.Read More »