Director: Shivendra Singh Dungarpur; Producer: Shivendra Singh Dungarpur; Cinematographer: Mahesh Aney, Kiran Deohans, V. Gopinath, K.U. Mohanan, Avik Mukhopadhyay, Ranjan Palit, H.M. Ramachandra, R.V. Ramani, Vikas Sivaraman, Santhosh Thundiyil, P.S. Vinod; Editor: Irene Dhar Malik; Cast: U.R. Ananthamurthy, G. Ananthappa, Beena Antony, Vivek Athavale, Shabana Azmi, Ramachandra Babu, Kumar Bangarappa, Saira Banu, Jahnu Barua, Shyam Benegal, Jaya Bhaduri, Mahesh Bhatt, Suresh Chabria, Basu Chatterjee, Vidhu Vinod Chopra, Yash Chopra, Kiran David, Sitara Devi, Surama Ghatak, Venu Goopaalan, Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Ashutosh Gowariker, Gulzar, Kamal Haasan, K. Hariharan, Rajkumar Hirani, Rashid Irani, Jainath Jaiswal, Nasreen Munni Kabir, Shaji N. Karun, Girish Kasaravalli, Prakash Kelamane, Dilip Kumar, Balu Mahendra, Ketan Mehta, Saeed Akhtar Mirza, Bala Nair, P.K. Nair, Lester James Peries, Sriram Raghavan, G.A. Sheshagiri Rao, H.N. Narahari Rao, Mrinal Sen, Kundan Shah, Naseeruddin Shah, Kumar Shahani, Ramesh Sippy, Santosh Sivan, Krzysztof Zanussi
Duration: 02:30:56; Aspect Ratio: 1.767:1; Hue: 37.448; Saturation: 0.039; Lightness: 0.281; Volume: 0.181; Cuts per Minute: 6.983
Summary: P. K. Nair’s fascination with cinema began as a child and he watched his first few films lying on the white sand floor of a cinema in Trivandrum. He was a collector even then - collecting ticket stubs, lobby cards, even weighing machine tickets sporting pictures of the stars of the day. He grew up to be a great collector of films.
1,700 films were made in India during the silent film era, of which only nine survive thanks to the efforts of Nair. He travelled to remote parts of India to collect and save cans of rare films. The fact that Dadasaheb Phalke is recognized today as the father of Indian cinema is Nair’s doing. He tried to save any film that he could get his hands on, be it world cinema, Hindi popular films or regional Indian cinema. He even took world cinema to the villages of India.
He has influenced generations of Indian film students especially the Indian New Wave filmmakers such as Mani Kaul, Kumar Shahani, Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Ketan Mehta, Saeed Akhtar Mirza, Jahnu Barua, Girish Kasaravalli, John Abraham (director), Vidhu Vinod Chopra and Kundan Shah.
The film is woven with interviews of several filmmakers and film personalities who have been influenced directly and indirectly by P. K. Nair, among them Krzysztof Zanussi, Lester James Peries, Vidhu Vinod Chopra, Saeed Akhtar Mirza, Gulzar, Basu Chatterjee, Naseeruddin Shah, Kamal Haasan, Girish Kasaravalli, Jahnu Barua, Jaya Bachchan, Dilip Kumar, Saira Banu, Sitara Devi, Santosh Sivan, Rajkumar Hirani, Shyam Benegal, Mahesh Bhatt, Yash Chopra, Ramesh Sippy, Mrinal Sen and Surama Ghatak.
Besides the interviews, the film has rare footage from early Indian masterpieces like Raja Harishchandra, Kaliya Mardan, Gallant Hearts, Marthanda Verma, Jamai Babu, Fearless Nadia, Sant Tukaram, Achut Kanya, Kismat, Chandralekha and Kalpana - all films that were archived and thus saved by Nair.
Indiancine.ma requires JavaScript.