Bangladesh News

The way Bangladesh Film Archive (BFA) is preserving Promothesh Barua’s Devdas might make one think that this is one of the most available film in the country. The film is cleaned by unskilled and untrained workers using bare hands and velvet cloth or torn pieces of T-shirts.

This is the only copy of the film which was made in undivided Bengal in 1934. A number of films based on the story of Devdas were later made in India and Bangladesh.

The only print of the 1934 film is being preserved in a room of a rented house of BFA at Mohammadpur in the capital at 26 degrees Celsius when the international standard is 12 deg Celsius or less.

About 2,500 films are “prweserved” at the BFA, established in 1978, and the authorities officially do not have any idea of how many of the films are rare and how many have been damaged.

The condition of the 1934 Devdas came to light when BFA officials tried to put the film on a projector during an investigation by The Daily Star.

It took quite a while to get the old projector operational and when the black-and-white film began on the silver screen of a rented congested-auditorium of BFA it was a shock to The Daily Star correspondent.

The print was in deplorable condition and even while giving full attention from only a few yards the dialogues between Parbati and her husband were very difficult to follow. The sound has become inaudible and the film has become obscure.

The BFA projectionists struggled to raise the volume to almost no effect, still the dialogues could not be clearly heard.

On the corridor leading to the BFA’s so-called vault lies a row of piled-up films collected in mid-July. Films like Beder Meye, Moner Moto Bou, Shesh Porjonto, all made in 1959, and Onek Diner Chena, made in 1966, were found in the pile.

The rusty tin-made film cans had been on the damp floor since at least mid-July in temperatures over 30 deg Celsius.

The BFA only scotch-taped the lids of cans to the base so that the cans are not opened or stolen by drug addicts who often wander around the place. The taping is the only preservation effort made so far for the films.

The preservers claimed that the films were given to them incomplete and some even had 3-4 reels missing.

The corridor bears the testimony of BFA mismanagement and irresponsibility.

These are just two instances of how around 2,500 films including a number of rare classics are being preserved on the ground floor of the rented house using years-old technology of film preservation.

The entire process of preservation is done manually using two winding machines and two people checking the films.

Mismanagement, preservers’ apathy to carrying out duties, the absence of training, shortage of manpower, inadequate budget, and the absence of a permanent building have contributed over the years to bring the BFA to this sorry state.

Old machines are used at the BFA like the film measuring machine and the two projectors it has.

Other obstacles include producers’ and directors’ reluctance to hand over their films to the BFA. They even use Carbon Tetra Chloride (CTC) solution, an outdated method of preserving films, which even the BFA stopped using since 1985, BFA officials said.

“The government neglects the institution and the BFA officials are just passing days as if spending leisure time. They do not have any knowledge about films,” said Mahiuddin Faruque, former director (design) of BTV and a film expert.

“The BFA preservers do not have any technical knowledge about film preservation. They must know how to preserve film scientifically and fund crisis is another problem of our government,” said eminent artist Prof Mustafa Monwar, adding, “We must ensure a certain environment for film preservation.”

“We have lost many of our documentaries and short films on the Liberation War but I found a number of them well preserved in the archives of CBS in UK 10 years ago. The films preserved there is very well arranged and scientifically maintained. When I went there they asked me to have a cup of tea and produced a list of Bangladeshi documentaries and short films they have preserved before I had finished my tea,” Monwar added.

“Preservers must be well trained and training must be arranged for them. The BFA has become a neglected organisation of the country and you will not find an archive like ours anywhere on earth,” prominent filmmaker Tanvir Mokammel said with a hint of sarcasm.

“The people working in film preservation are not film technicians. The unskilled persons must be trained immediately. And we also need budget for the BFA and it needs to be digitised like other film achieves of the world,” he added.

“An accurate temperature and humidity is required to ensure quality of films in preservation. It cannot be ensured in a rented house. The people working at the film archive are sincere but they need training and budget to carry out their duties,” said filmmaker Morshedul Islam.

BFA PRESERVATIONS AND COLLECTIONS
The films at BFA are kept in 52 racks inside silver and tin-made cans. Over 400 tin-made cans are still in use and many of them have become rusty. The cataloguing and classification of the preserved films are not organised and scientific.

The movies collected so far by BFA are kept in three rooms, which it calls vaults, and a balcony of the house which has been into made a room and is also called a vault. The BFA uses 12 window-type domestic air conditioners (AC) to keep the temperature down. The ACs, however, cannot keep temperature below 18 deg Celsius.

The dehumidifiers used there are also meant for domestic use. With the two film-winding machines and two people checking films, 60-70 films can be “checked and cleaned” in a year.

The Daily Star correspondent saw the temperature of 30 deg Celsius in Vault-1 and -2 and 26 deg Celsius in Vault-3 and -4. The walls close to the racks were damp and films were being cleaned and measured with bare hands.

“You must wear gloves before you touch a film. We never allow touching films without wearing gloves but it is being done at BFA,” said Tanvir Mokammel.

“Who will take the risk of giving films only to be destroyed at the BFA? Moreover, it costs Tk 60,000-70,000 to make a print of a film and we have financial constraint. It is difficult to give a print of a film for preservation immediately after its release. A print of the film can be given six months after the film is released,” he added.

The filmmakers suggested that the BFA officials can at least be sent to India for training or a trainer can be brought in.

The projectors being used at the archive were repaired only once after they were installed in 1980. One of the projectors remains out of order often and it has become very difficult to keep them operational since they are outdated and spare parts have become difficult to get.

“Due to the way the films are being so-called preserved, a number of them will be destroyed within 10 years while some will be OK for a little while more. But the films will not be recoverable if the preservation procedures are not modernised immediately,” said a BFA preserver seeking anonymity.

“If immediate steps are not taken to convert the films into digital format, a few years later it would not be possible to convert those films,” the preserver added.

The BFA so far “preserved” feature films, short-films, documentaries, films on poets Kazi Nazrul Islam and Rabindranath Tagore and film related to the Liberation War.

Notable films so far preserved and collected by the BFA include Mukh O Mukhosh, Asia, Harano Din, Kokhono Aseni, Suryasnan, Kacher Deyal, Dharapat, Sutorang, Nodi O Nari, Rupban, Behula, Anwara, Neel Akasher Nichey, Palonko, Jibon Theke Neya, Jago Hua Savera, Surjo Dighal Bari, Padma Nadir Majhi, Nobab Sirajuddoula, Ora Egaro Jon, Titas Ekti Nodir Naam, Lathial, Suprobhat, Bashundhara, Sareng Bou, Surjograhan, Chhinnomul, Arun Barun Kironmala and Rupali Saikatey.

There are foreign films like Roshomon by Akira Kurosawa, films by Lumiere Brothers, a collection of films of Charlie Chaplin, Battleship Potemkin, Mother, Bicycle Thief, and October.

Films of Zahir Raihan, Satyajit Ray, Abdul Zabbar Khan, Salauddin, Mostafiz, Ehtesham, Alamgir Kabir, Amzad Hossain, Suvash Datta, Kamal Ahmed, Narayan Ghosh Mita, AJ Karder, Rajen Tarafder, Hrithwik Ghatak, and Goutam Ghosh, among others, have been preserved in the achieve.

Even though the BFA collected and preserved negatives and prints of 8mm, 70mm, 35mm and 16mm celluloid films earlier, it began collecting and preserving films in CD, DVD and DV-Cam formats since 2007.

Besides films, the BFA has 3,053 film-related books, 14,575 photographs, 6,677 film posters, 1,986 screenplay, 287 books on music, shortened script of 1,365 films, documents of 11,895 film festivals, 11,895 news clips related to films, 9,950 magazines and 3,832 other archival materials in its library.

BUILDING NEEDED
After the BFA was established in Shankar, the film preservation unit of BFA was moved three times–to Ganabhaban Complex in 1987 from Shankar, to College Gate from Ganabhaban in 1997 and it is now being moved to Bangladesh Betar Bhaban in Shahbagh.

The preservation and collection unit has been moved more than five times from one floor to another in the five-storied building it is currently using, BFA sources said. The building also houses a bank and an insurance company.

The building the BFA is being moved to is also old and do not have enough space to accommodate a film archive, which needs space for a library, study and film projection facilities.

The BFA has so far collected and preserved only 2,538 local and foreign films as of December 31, 2007.

The government allocated the BFA 1.86 acres of land at Agargaon in 1993. Following the allotment, the BFA paid Tk 2 crore to the ministry in 1997 as price of the land. It also paid Tk 1.86 crore to the ministry for constructing buildings on the land.

Even though the Chief Adviser’s Office ordered the Ministry of Housing and Public Works to hand over the land to BFA on June 3, 2007, nothing has been done so far, sources said.