Last week I was ecstatic and privileged to see one of the oldest Indian feature films I have seen in my life—the beautifully restored, silent, black-and-white film Behula (55 min, with English intertitles), made in 1921. Imagine this: Behula is an Indo-French collaboration, directed by Camille Legrand, French director and Pathe cinematographer in Calcutta, based on a Bengali folk legend about the snake goddess Manasa, produced by Jamshedji Framji Madan, the Parsi head of Madan Theatres, Calcutta, starring Patience Cooper, of Jewish-Iraqi origin. We could see the film on the big screen last week, at the gorgeous art deco Regal Cinema, founded by Faramji Sidhwa, another Parsi, restored by the Fondation Jerome Seydoux-Pathe in France in 2022, with the restoration done in 4K by the Image Retrouvee in Paris and Bologna, and brought to us by the Film Heritage Foundation (FHF) headed by Shivendra Singh Dungarpur. It gives you a sense of how rich, diverse, inclusive—and international—Indian film history is, and how Indians are able to see our own rare restored Indian films in a public theatre today, again with a lot of support from Indian and international partners. The screening was part of the 7th Film Preservation and Restoration Workshop in Mumbai, held by FHF, the International Federation of Film Archives and the CSMVS (formerly Prince of Wales Museum). It is part of pioneering work being done by Dungarpur—as a not-for-profit organisation—on film preservation and restoration in South Asia, teaching preservation and restoration skills, and making archival and restored films accessible in public theatres across India.

The FHF has organised two landmark film festivals of Amitabh Bachchan and Dilip Kumar, in theatres nationwide. Bachchan: Back To The Beginning ran from Oct 8-11, screening 11 films on 22 screens in 17 cities all over India. The films were Deewaar, Amar Akbar Anthony, Kabhi Kabhie, Namak Halaal, Abhimaan, Mili, Satte Pe Satta, Chupke Chupke, Don, Kaala Paththar and Kaalia. The ‘Dilip Kumar: Hero Of Heroes’ festival runs this weekend on December 10-11, screening Aan (1952), Devdas (1955), Ram Aur Shyam (1967) and Shakti (1982). The festivals are held in collaboration with PVR and Inox, the latter film screening at 30 all-India cinemas, and available on bookmyshow.