Shivendra Singh Dungarpur: The Movie Memoirist

Shivendra Singh Dungarpur is at the South Park Cemetery in Kolkata, walking around the graves, trying to find Patience Cooper’s grandfather. She was an Anglo-Indian star in 1920s Hindi cinema, and her granddaughter got in touch with Dun­garpur to ask if he could help her in piec­ing together Cooper’s remarkable story.

Born in Calcutta to an Englishman and an English-Armenian mother, Cooper acted in movies such as Nala Damayanti and Zehari Saap, before retir­ing in 1944, traversing the silent and talkies eras. Dungarpur, who is part archivist, part detective, part archaeolo­gist and all historian, had his Eureka moment when he found the grave of Captain John Clement, Cooper’s grandfather, who died in 1812, with the Original Calcutta Annual Directory and Calendar recording him as being a “mariner and the commander and managing owner of the Bussorah Packet, a ship of 300 tons built at Pegu.” “This is just the beginning,” he says, of con­necting the dots about Patience Cooper, adding, “We know already she was not Jewish as she was proclaimed to be.”

His research and restoration of archi­val material has led to several corrections, many hidden histories being made vis­ible, and many new narratives emerging. In the last month alone, Dungarpur has been gifted photos and film possessions by actor Waheeda Rehman, late actor Madan Puri’s family, and by Umesh Mehra, son of FC Mehra of the leg­endary Eagle Films, who made hits such as Professor (1962) and Amrapali (1966).

Dungarpur already has 700 films, the collections of 100 artists, and objects ranging from singer KL Saigal’s harmo­nium to Guru Dutt’s Mitchell camera, from PC Barua’s letters to his wife, actor Jamuna. It all began for Dungarpur, 54, a history honours graduate from St Stephen’s College, Delhi, when he met filmmaker Martin Scorsese at the Il Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna, Italy’s premier film preservation and restoration festival. Scorsese had been asked by Pandit Ravi Shankar to help restore the film Kalpana, 1948, the only film made by his brother, the dancer Uday Shankar, starring among others Amala Shankar. “I went back to Pune and started looking for it,” he says. That also led to his first documentary, on the legendary archivist PK Nair titled Celluloid Man (2012). “When I was at Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), PK Nair opened the world of cinema to me by showing us these great films from all over the world,” he says.

As a filmmaker, Dungarpur began by assisting Gulzar on Libaas (1988) and Lekin (1990), till the poet asked him to go to film school. Dungarpur duly did so, learning screenwriting and direction at FTII, being shown the best of cinema by Nair, going on to make three well-regarded documentaries and several award-winning ad films. “I was making cinema, experiencing it, answering questions of myself,” he says. “For instance, how can you use state money to tell stories that are sometimes anti-state?”

The cinema lover in him caught up with the ad filmmaker in 2014, and the result is the Film Heritage Foundation, which is trying to do its bit, picture by picture, letter by letter, film by film, to save Indian cinema’s legacy. “I realised so much is already lost but there is still so much to save. It changed my direc­tion in life.” He started by supporting the British Film Institute restoration of The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927), one of the nine films Alfred Hitchcock made in Britain before moving to America.

It’s a passion project funded by lovers of cinema, such as  Amitabh Bachchan. And it is something that gives him immense satisfaction. Most recently, he was thrilled to connect all the dots in the Ardeshir Irani story and retrace the history of Imperial Films, one of Hindi cinema’s earliest studios. “It took us ten years, but we managed to track his three children and their sto­ries,” says Dungarpur. “We found mate­rial on Moti Gidwani, who is credited as the director of Alam Ara (1931) and found he worked with Alfred Hitchcock in the 1920s. We traced his son.”

Sohrab Modi’s films, PC Barua’s letters, Sahir Ludhianvi’s poems, and Sadhana’s personal collection of close to 1,400 photographs that chronicle her life right from her school days, can also be found in his collection. Most recently, his team and he discovered many new facets of Saigal, when they acquired the papers and photos of actor Madan Puri, who was his cousin.

He has discovered forgotten geogra­phies in Mumbai too, like the Punjabi Gully in Matunga, which was home to 90 families associated with Hindi cinema, including stars such as Saigal, Madan Puri, Majrooh Sultanpuri, KN Singh and Shyam. It is where character-actor Manmohan Krishna’s 103-year-old widow still lives, a vital con­nection to a quickly fading past.

A few days before the doors shut forever on RK Studios, Dungarpur and his team visited the studio and spent a few poignant hours walking through the floors and paying their respects to the remnants of the legacy of a great film­maker. “We were delighted when the RK family agreed to donate some significant memorabilia including the boat that was used in the song ‘O Mehbooba’ from the film Sangam (1964) which was shot at Ooty Lake and the statue of the founding father Prithviraj Kapoor that had been poised for years at the steps leading to the make-up rooms,” he says.

As for Waheeda Rehman’s collection, it is a treasure trove of precious mate­rial including the saree she wore to the CID premiere, her photo albums and photographs and lobby cards from mile­stone films like Kaagaz Ke Phool (1959), Chaudhvin ka Chand (1960), Sahib Bibi aur Ghulam (1962) etc.

Dungarpur’s collection comprises about 2,00,000 objects, which includes over 70,000 documents, 2,200 books, 62,000 photographs, to name just a few items. His collection-inspired travels have taken him to Antop Hill in Mumbai to persuade silver scrap dealers to part with priceless films and to second-hand stores for forgotten treasures.

Aided by his filmmaker-wife Teesha Cherian and a band of six to seven conservators, they hope to open a Centre of the Moving Image in Mumbai’s Ballard Pier. “Documenting what is left of the past is the most exacting aspect of our work,” he says. “No day is like any other. Each day we get queries from people asking for help to connect to what is their heritage,” he says.

The Film Heritage Foundation has restored movies as well, including Malayali auteur Govindan Aravindan’s Thampu (1978) and Shyam Benegal’s Manthan (1976). The restored Thampu and Ishanou by Aribam Syam Sharma were selected for red-carpet world premieres at the Cannes Film Festival 2022 and 2023 respectively.

Hard-won triumphs for years of hard work.

cinemacultural heritageFilm Heritage FoundationRK StudiosShivendra Singh DungarpurThe Movie Memoirist