Prabhat Studio founder’s kin ask why such neglect

At the Damle household in Prabhat Nagar, the phone hasn’t stopped ringing since the fire that destroyed 250 pre-1950 nitrate films at t...

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At the Damle household in Prabhat Nagar, the phone hasn’t stopped ringing since the fire that destroyed 250 pre-1950 nitrate films at the FTII cold-storage vault last week.

But the Damles — descendants of Vishnupant Damle who founded Prabhat Studios along with V. Shantaram, S. Fatehlal, Keshavrao Dhaibar and Sitarampant Kulkarni — do not have many reassuring answers.

Their callers want to know if any of their films could be salvaged. The only consolation the Damles can offer is they reproduced most films by the Prabhat Film Company, which existed from June 1, 1929 to October 13, 1953, on U-matic tapes. Damle’s grandsons — Anil, Ajit and Vivek — released CDs of eight films made between 1935 and 1944 entitled Juna te Sona. The copies sold out almost immediately.

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‘‘Around 40 Prabhat films were stored in the vault. Second and third-generation copies will definitely have qualitative loss,’’ said Anil. Faint images of Jambu Kaka — India’s first cartoon film made by Prabhat Film Company — still play on the mind of 22-year-old Amol, Damle’s great grandson.

Across the road from where the studio stood is Prabhat Nagar, where the five founders built identical houses. Now, only three houses are left, the other two having been converted into apartment blocks.

The nitrates, which were bought by a Chennai-based film buff after Prabhat’s liquidation, were retrieved by Anant, Damle’s son, in 1969. ‘‘When NFAI approached us for the negatives we gave them because it is not possible for one person to maintain them,’’ said Anil.

‘‘What hurts is that the films were waiting to be shifted to the state-of-the-art cold storage for two years,’’ he added.

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‘‘The vault was built during the Prabhat era with double walls for insulation. A water tank on top helped in cooling. Although the tank did not have water, the walls prevented the fire from spreading to Studio I, which is a heritage structure in itself,’’ said Anil.

Bapu Watve, an expert on the Prabhat era, cannot hide his indignation. ‘‘How could we neglect such a heritage?’’ Watve, who was associated with Prabhat since his childhood, says some of the footage, like three edited reels of a film on Lokmanya Tilak and 24 documentaries, are now lost forever.