Covid Plays Villain With Film Preservation Efforts, Rare Material Ruined

Unlike typical desk jobs where one could pack up their laptop and embrace the work-from-home culture when the growing coronavirus emptied out offices and institutions, remote work for archivists can be tricky and almost unfeasible in a line of work that requires physical access to the fragile pieces of history in their care.

- Mohua Das

When filmmaker and archivist Shivendra Singh Dungarpur had to shut down his Film Heritage Foundation overnight in March, he had little idea of how the weeks would stretch into months.

Although most of the films were in their temperature-controlled vault, the mains had to be switched off, given the risk of letting air conditioners and dehumidifiers run unattended for a long time. As the lockdown became more prolonged and summer set in, the anxiety about the moving image artefacts kept gnawing. “We knew it could have a devastating effect on the collections,” said Dungarpur. Unable to control his anxiety, Dungarpur decided to open up the archive after four weeks. His fears weren’t unfounded. “It was like a sauna with the temperature at a fiery 32 degrees celsius and humidity at 65%,” he recalls.

“When we opened the compactors, we discovered that some of our precious nitrate photo negatives of film shoots from the 1930s had crumbled to dust and a few film reels had undergone the vinegar syndrome causing the film to decompose as a result of the heat and humidity,” he recounted.