'... And When We Saw The Young Audience Coming': Filmmaker Shivendra Singh Dungarpur Recalls Dev Anand's 100th Birthday Celebration

In a conversation with ABP Live, Shivendra Singh Dungarpur shared FHF's efforts towards preservation of Indian cinema and also recalled fond memories from Dev Anand's 100th birthday celebration.

Shivendra Singh Dungarpur Recalls Dev Anand's 100th Birthday Celebration

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Celebrating the 100th birth anniversary of Dev Anand that was on the 26th of September, Film Heritage Foundation announcesd a unique festival titled 'Dev Anand@100 - Forever Young'; that paid tribute to the timeless entertainment icon. The two-day weekend celebrations were held jointly in association with NFDC-NFAI (National Film Development Corporation Of India- National Film Archive Of India) and PVR Inox, on 23^rd and 24^th of September across 30 cities and 55 cinema halls all over India.

Film Heritage Foundation, which is a not-for-profit organization founded by filmmaker and archivist Shivendra Singh Dungarpur, meticulously curated a tailored collection of films where audiences spent the weekend with Dev Anand in his different memorable avatars as the romantic hero, the dashing spy and the fun-loving rogue.

Audiences in Mumbai, Pune, Goa, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Trivandrum, Chennai, Bangalore, Lucknow, Kolkata, Guwahati, Indore, Jaipur, Nagpur, Chandigarh, New Delhi, Gwalior, Rourkela, Raipur, Noida,  Kochi, Aurangabad, Vadodara, Surat, Mohali amongst other cities witnessed an unmissable opportunity to watch four landmark films of Dev Anand restored by NFCDC-NFAI on the big screen.

In a conversation with ABP Live over email, Shivendra Singh Dungarpur shared the efforts of Film Heritage Foundation towards preservation of Indian cinema and also recalled fond memories from Dev Anand's 100th birthday celebration.

Here are some excerpts from the interview:

Can you share something about your efforts towards preservation and conservation of cinem

When the foundation was set-up in 2015 and as you are aware that we are preserving 100s of films, we have a large collection of posters, lobby cards, we do workshops, we have a book collection. We are the largest non governmental organization preserving our cinematic heritage, which is not only material from Mumbai but material from all over the industry, whether its Bengali cinema, Telugu, Kannada, Tamil, Malayalam, Punjabi, Bhojpuri, whatever you can call it. Today restoration have been shown in Cannes, whether it was our Thamp or Aribam Syam Sharma’s Ishanou they were all selected for Cannes and were regarded as discoveries and very good restorations. More importantly, we are continuing to restore some milestone films like Manthan of Shyam Benegal and many other films like that. So the work of our preservation and conservation is an ongoing process and we were very successful when we did the Bachchan Back To The Beginning (we put 11 films of Amitabh Bachchan last year) . 

How did you celebrate Dev Anand's 100th birthday?

Dev Sahab’s birthday is on 26th but we thought the best will be to celebrate by streaming four of his classic cinemas – 'Johny Mera Naam', 'Jewel Thief', 'CID' and 'Guide'. We decided on 23rd and 24th September to do a film festival across these three and Waheeda Rehman ji came for the opening with Jackie Shroff, the entire Dev Ananad family like Devina Anand, Vaibhav Anand, Dev Anand’s sister, Shriram Raghavan who is deeply influenced by Johny Mera Naam and he made a film called 'Johnny Gaddar'. The entire celebration happened with the screening of 'Johny Mera Naam' and 'Guide'. Waheeda ji introduced 'Guide' and when we saw the young audience coming, we realised that this is going to be a huge success.

One of the most important thing which happened for us is when Waheeda ji got the Dadasaheb Phalke award, she talked about the work of Film Heritage Foundation and she said FHF is reviving us and I think that itself speaks a lot about the foundation, the feeling these great talents, artists or legends have for the Film Heritage Foundation. We have got many more projects lined up, many restorations and a lot of preservation work to be done, we are collecting evevrything. 

Could you tell us something about your previous projects - Dilip Kumar festival, Bachchan festival, etc and what was the response like?

Within the span of 1 year, from October to October, we have done 3 big festivals – Bachchan Back To The Beginning, Dilip Kumar Hero Of Heroes and now Dev Anand@100 all of which have been a huge success. You can see of much of success that while Bachchan Back To The Beginning, we did in 20 cities Dilip Kumar in 30 cities and Dev Anand almost 40 cities and 80 cinema halls.

Any upcoming projects that you could talk about?

Our most important work right now is of course the Olympics which is going to take place in Mumbai and Delhi. Olympic in Reel Life is about association with the Olympic museum and we are showcasing almost 33 great films from 1912 onto the present era. We are showing these films with a photographic exhibition, not just at the NCPA in Mumbai but also in 15 BMC locations across Mumbai.

It was so important for the foundation to do the Olympic in reel life, not just in Mumbai, from the 1st to the 7th of October, but in Delhi also 7th to the 14th ocotber. It's so important to do that because the foundation is not just about feature films, it also preserves actual films, documentaries, home movies, sports films, anything which is to do with the audio visual heritage, we are preserving that and by aligning with the Olympic museum which is part of the IOC we are almost sending a message that this heritage which has got the Indians in Olympics whether you see Milka singh racing or you see india winning in mosco or the contemporary films...