The vaults of the National Film Archives of India (NFAI) here have acquired another rare gem in the form of a 100-year-old silent film Behula (1921), which was made by Kolkata’s famed Madan Theatre in the heyday of the silent film era.
The five-reel Behula was sourced from the Paris-based Fondation Jérôme Seydoux-Pathé, where it had been preserved for all these decades past. Housed in a distinctive heritage building on Paris’ Avenue des Gobelins, the Jérôme Seydoux-Pathé Foundation has been preserving, restoring and promoting the historical heritage of France’s legendary Pathé film studios and has more than 10,000 film titles from across the world in its collection.
This is the third Indian silent film to be acquired by the NFAI from the Paris-based archives in recent years, but the first to be acquired in its entirety (the other two acquisitions were only footages from two silent classics). All three were made by the historic Madan Theatre.
