South Asian Cinema IMLS Grant: A Conversation with Archivists After Year One

The first year of the IMLS grant to identify, inspect, and catalog the extensive South Asian Cinema Collections at the George Eastman Museum has been both exciting and productive. Archivists Erica Jones and Lydia Creech have really enjoyed working with this extremely unique collection of films. As they approach the midway point of the grant, it is exciting to see the number of film reels left go down. Not that they were worried about being able to finish, but it feels good to be on track and see the end!

In this blog, Erica and Lydia reflect on some questions following year one of this grant.

What have you been able to complete in your first year?

We have inspected, repaired, and cataloged 548 titles.

• Indian: 407 titles
• Pakistani: 141 titles

Reels: 3,868

• Indian: 3,053 reels
• Pakistani: 815 reels

Reels Left: 2,707

• Indian: 1,260 reels
• Pakistani: 1,447 reels

We also shared our work in a variety of different ways over the year:

• 2021: In Focus talk “Conserving South Asian Cinema at the George Eastman Museum” with Matterport tour of Kodak 350.

• AMIA Presentation: Preserving Pakistani films and fragments at the George Eastman Museum.
• AMIA Vault Tour: Tour of George Eastman Museum’s South Asian Cinema Vault
• Collaboration with the India Community Center in Macedon, NY on a film poster exhibition and have traveled to see other great exhibits put on by this community.
• Dryden Theatre introductions for Apu Trilogy to celebrate Satyajit Ray’s centennial.

What are you most excited to see when you open a can?

Lydia: Films already on cores, the plastic center piece which makes it possible to wind through the film for inspection. Many of the Indian films and all of the Pakistani films were shipped to us without cores, which means they can’t be inspected yet. When I open a can and see that the reels have been stored properly, it means I can start inspecting right away. It just makes the process go a little quicker.

Erica: No fragments or cuts with the Pakistani collection. Fragments or cuts are small clips or sections of the film which are found in the containers with the reels. These fragments then need to be organized, inspected, and potentially reinserted into the film. While the majority of fragments found in the cans correlate with the film print being inspected, many can be from other films and consequently need to be stored in a separate location for future identification and conservation. From the images below you can see the various states in which we find fragments and have to organize those before inspection.

Has this broadened your interest in South Asian Cinema?

Erica: Yes, this position has broadened my interest in South Asian cinema. Coming into this position with more experience with South Asian culture and film, the opportunity to watch new cinema is always exciting.

For example, in our collection we have Bhool Bhulayiaa, a Hindi language film from 2007, which is known as a psychological thriller. It was really well done, convincing both Lydia and I to watch the film. While researching this film, we discovered it was a remake of the Malayalam film, Manichitrathazhu from 1993 (a film not in our collection). The original was so popular, it was remade in four other languages: Kannda, Tamil, Bengali, and Hindi. Because of our interest, we decided to watch the original online. Since then, we have watched 3 out of the 5 versions of this film and are looking forward to watching the rest. We enjoy discussing the differences we see within each version especially as relates to production budget (bigger with each remake), star power, intended audience, and dance styles.

Lydia: Additionally, we have actually been going to see new releases of Hindi, Tamil, and English language co-productions in local theaters. I never thought I’d be “taking my work home with me” so to speak. For Diwali, we really enjoyed Sooryavashi. We have also been having South Asian movie nights at home where we cook up Indian dishes and watch titles from the collection that interest us.

What are some of the challenges you’ve faced and how have you overcome them?

Lydia: I came to this collection with very little knowledge about South Asian film industries, especially Pakistani film. I have been reading on my own and making use of the Museum’s library. I’ve found the books Pakistan Cinema: 1947–1997 by Mushtaq Gazdar, Cinema and Society: Film and Social Change in Pakistan edited by Ali S. Khan, and The Pop-Culture Junkie’s Guide to Pakistani Cinema by Ushah Kazi especially helpful. I have found that the more I am able to recognize the stars and trends in Pakistani cinema, I have had an easier time identifying the films I am inspecting. I also try to watch the Pakistani films if they are online (many are on Youtube). Even without subtitles, I find it helpful to get a sense of the styles and plots of Pakistani films.

Erica: The biggest challenge we have faced when processing the Pakistani collection is identification. Many of the films are mislabeled or have credits in non-latin script (usually stylized Urdu script). There is often no online content with which to confirm potential titles and the process we have gone through with some films is unique, frustrating, and ultimately rewarding, especially if we can identify and verify a title. Some techniques I have employed are looking at random song-dance sequences or brief clips I can find online, Google translate via images taken during inspection, or even actor identification by working slowly through filmographies to identify which potential film we are looking at. Two examples are a trailer which I originally thought would not be part of the collection as there were not many South Asian actors depicted. However, by using some translation apps I was able to determine it was the German Pakistani co-production Tiger Gang (Iqbal Shehzad, Pakistan, 1974) and could then verify the trailer to those found online.

Another partial film had all the credits but just in stylized Urdu. The issue with stylized scripts is that translation apps will often not recognize the letters. The title in our master list labeled it as reels 1–4 of Ishq Ishq (Sangeeta, Pakistan, 1977) but this title didn’t match with the images I was able to take during inspection. However, by working with this collection for the past year and becoming more familiar with actors and actresses, I was able to identify one of the main actors, Sudhir. Then by going through Sudhir’s filmography on the Pakmag website I was able to identify potential titles which I then confirmed with a colleague who is fluent in Urdu. The film I was actually inspecting was Ghairat Meray Veer Di (Razzaq, Pakistan, 1973). Finally by confirming the full title of the print I was able to find the second half or reels 5–8 of the film in our collection making this a complete print.

For these two prints the process of confirming titles is like a puzzle where we have all these pieces and just have to figure out how they go together. Most often these strategies seem to work but we are still working through some of the incomplete titles with processes like this. Hopefully all our incomplete prints can be ultimately identified over the next part of our grant.

What have been some interesting finds while working with this collection?

Erica: While working with this collection we have come across some beautiful and sometimes odd film images and ephemera from the collections. Here are a selection of pictures we have taken.

Lydia: I am used to seeing films that have faded to all red, but I have never seen a film that has faded to green before. Also, I liked the copycat Paramount logo.

With the decomposition of the film due to Vinegar Syndrome, the films become hard to core and wind. As you can see, some reels need to be loosely wound and can almost not fit onto our vertical inspection reels or become bumpy and not fit into the cans.

We have also come across some reels which have extreme mold, water, and rust damage. For these reels we have cleaned them as best we can, but we are not able to core or inspect them at this time. We hope in the future that we can inspect these reels but for the moment we have recanned them to prevent further damage and decay.

We also found one complete film poster and one film pamphlet with the Pakistani reels. The film poster is from the film Nai Tehzeeb (Agha Hassan Imtesal, Pakistan, 1979).

The pamphlet is promotional material for the film Lad Pyar aur Beti (Sangeeta, Pakistan, 1978). It was found sandwiched between reels in a metal box. In great condition, you can really see the vibrancy of the color. The inside of the pamphlet gives a brief synopsis of the film in both Urdu and English, has the film credits, and has the lyrics for the songs written out in Urdu.

What would you like to see happen over the course of the next year as you continue with this project?

Lydia: As a national cinema, Bollywood has films that fit almost any topic you can imagine. We hope to work with Curator of Film Exhibitions Jared Case to fit films from the South Asian Cinema collection into programs he has already started curating for screening in the Dryden Theatre. We also thought it could be fun to program films around the major Indian holidays, such as Holi.

Erica: We are also looking forward to working more closely with researchers, graduate students, film archivists, and interested members of the public during the next year.

Want to learn more? Join Erica and Lydia for their second In Focus talk on Friday, August 5 at 1 p.m. Visit eastman.org for details.

This project was made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services: Grant #MA-245614-OMS-20. Visit www.imls.gov. Learn more about the grant in our previous post: Cinema Refugees: Conserving and Preserving South Asian Film.