Guwahati: Long before Manipuri cinema found its formal footing, before feature films began to define a new cultural identity for the state, a small 8mm camera was already turned towards Manipur.
Behind that camera was Maharaj Kumar Priyabrata Singh, regarded as one of the earliest Manipuri practitioners to independently use an 8mm camera extensively to document the state’s culture, people and way of life. His films were not necessarily made as commercial cinema. They were, in many ways, acts of observation—moving images of a society recording itself at a time when filmmaking was still beyond the reach of most people.
That makes the preservation of his surviving reels far more than an exercise in saving old film. It could mean saving a visual memory of Manipur itself.
Now, 15 fragile 8mm reels believed to have been shot by Maharaj Kumar Priyabrata Singh and Kongbrailatpam Ibohal Sharma are set to undergo professional inspection, cataloguing and preservation digitisation under an international collaboration between the SN Chand Cine Archive & Museum (SNCCAM) and the Home Movies Foundation – National Family Film Archive, Bologna.
If the footage survives in meaningful condition, its preservation could become one of the most significant milestones yet in Manipur’s effort to safeguard its early cinematic and audiovisual heritage.
For a film culture that formally began just over five decades ago, these reels may reach further back—to a time when the camera was not yet an industry, but an instrument of curiosity, memory and documentation.
A pioneer behind the camera
Maharaj Kumar Priyabrata Singh’s significance lies precisely in this early impulse to document.
At a time when filmmaking equipment was expensive, technically demanding and difficult to access, the independent use of an 8mm camera to extensively record the life and culture of Manipur represented an extraordinary undertaking. His camera could preserve details that written histories often leave behind: faces, ceremonies, landscapes, customs, everyday life and the changing texture of a society.
In that sense, Priyabrata Singh can be viewed as an early pioneer of Manipuri cinema and, perhaps more importantly, as an early visual chronicler of Manipur.
The surviving reels, therefore, are not simply films in the conventional sense. They are historical documents.
Every frame may carry evidence of a world that has since changed.
And film stock is unforgiving. Unlike memory, it does not remain intact merely because it is precious. It shrinks, fades, becomes brittle and chemically deteriorates. Once damaged beyond recovery, what it contains may disappear forever.
That is why the proposed preservation of these reels assumes such importance.
From fragile reels to archival preservation
The SN Chand Cine Archive & Museum, the state film archive and museum operated by the Manipur State Film Development Society (MSFDS), has entered discussions with the Bologna-based Home Movies Foundation – National Family Film Archive for the professional assessment and preservation of the collection.
According to discussions with Foundation Director Paolo Simoni, the footage will not simply be transferred into digital files for viewing. It is proposed to be digitised according to internationally accepted preservation standards.
The process will include a comprehensive physical and chemical condition assessment, detailed conservation reports and professional cataloguing using internationally recognised metadata standards.
That distinction matters.
Digitising a film for access is not the same as preserving it. Proper film preservation begins with understanding the physical object itself—its condition, history and vulnerabilities—before creating a high-quality digital preservation master and ensuring that the original reels are appropriately safeguarded.
For Manipur, where much of its early audiovisual history survives in scattered, fragile and sometimes poorly documented materials, such an approach could establish a new standard for preserving the state’s cinematic memory.
A Bologna connection
The proposed collaboration is also the direct outcome of MSFDS’s growing engagement with the international film preservation community.
Dr Johnson Rajkumar, principal of MSFDS and a voluntary film conservationist, participated in the prestigious FIAF Film Restoration Summer School 2026 and the 40th Il Cinema Ritrovato Festival in Bologna, Italy, from June 19 to July 12, 2026.
He was the only Indian selected for the highly regarded training programme, which brought together practitioners and specialists from different parts of the world.
The intensive programme covered film inspection, conservation, restoration, digitisation, archival management and exhibition. Dr Rajkumar participated in laboratory sessions, worked alongside restoration specialists and attended lectures by experts associated with institutions including the George Eastman Museum, British Film Institute, Library of Congress and Warner Bros. Discovery Archives.
The training strengthened his technical understanding of film preservation while also establishing professional networks with international archival institutions and practitioners.
The proposed preservation of the 8mm reels is among the tangible outcomes of those connections.
Five years of building an institution
The development is part of a larger transformation that MSFDS has pursued over the past five years.
A defining moment came in 2021 with the establishment of the SN Chand Cine Archive & Museum. The archive was inaugurated on April 9, 2021, during the Golden Jubilee celebrations of Manipuri Cinema, which continued until May 2022 through a series of programmes marking 50 years of the state’s film industry.
For the first time, Manipur had a dedicated institutional space intended not merely to exhibit films but to collect, preserve, document and interpret its moving-image heritage.
Soon after its establishment, MSFDS entered a Memorandum of Understanding with the Film Heritage Foundation (FHF), Mumbai, which became the mentor institution for SNCCAM in film archiving, preservation and manpower development.
The partnership began with an intensive hands-on workshop in film archiving and preservation, introducing staff and volunteers to scientific methods of handling, inspecting and conserving film.
It was the beginning of an approach that would soon lead to the rescue of some of Manipur’s most important cinematic works.
Bringing Brojendragee Luhongba back from the brink
One of the first major preservation projects was Brojendragee Luhongba, regarded as the first feature film directed by a Manipuri filmmaker.
The search for surviving elements took volunteers of SNCCAM through an exercise in cinematic archaeology. A surviving positive print was eventually located through acclaimed filmmaker Makhonmani Mongsaba, who donated it to the archive for digitisation and restoration.
The condition of the reels, however, was alarming.
Examination at Prasad Lab revealed significant deterioration, with only part of the collection initially considered suitable for scanning. Following expert advice from FHF, the severely damaged reels were sent to Mumbai for specialised treatment.
The painstaking intervention eventually enabled almost the entire film to be recovered, with only a minute or two remaining beyond restoration.
The restored 4K digital version premiered on May 28, 2022, during the Golden Jubilee celebrations of Manipuri Cinema.
A film that had once stood on the edge of disappearance had been given another life.
Ishanou: from endangered film to Cannes Classics
The restoration effort then moved to another landmark—Ishanou, directed by Aribam Syam Sharma and written by M.K. Binodini Devi.
Its restoration was undertaken at L'Immagine Ritrovata in Bologna, one of the world’s leading film restoration laboratories.
The result reached far beyond the archive.
Following restoration, Ishanou was selected for the prestigious Cannes Classics section of the 2023 Cannes Film Festival.
For Manipuri cinema, it was a moment of international recognition. But it was also a demonstration of what film preservation can accomplish.
A regional film, once vulnerable to the ravages of time, could return to the international cinematic landscape because its original heritage had been carefully preserved.
The restoration mission continues with another Manipuri classic, Imagi Ningthem, written by M.K. Binodini Devi, produced by Kongbrailatpam Ibohal Sharma and directed by Aribam Syam Sharma. The film is currently undergoing digitisation and restoration through the continuing collaboration between MSFDS and FHF.
Preserving the wider record
The work extends beyond celebrated feature films.
Under the Government of India’s National Film Heritage Mission, MSFDS has also been working with the National Film Archive of India (NFAI), Pune.
Eight feature films—Sambal Wangma, Konthang, Nongju Ahing, Operation Sangai, Hayengna Kanageeno, Mayophygee Macha, Kanaga Hinghouni and Meichak—have already been digitised.
Four documentaries—Koro Kosii, Keibul Lamjao National Park, The Theatre Incarnate and Pebet—have also been digitised.
Together, these works form a broader visual record of Manipur’s cultural, environmental and social history.
And this is where the importance of the Priyabrata Singh reels becomes even clearer.
Film heritage is not made only of famous feature films. Sometimes the most revealing images are found in home movies, amateur footage, documentaries and private recordings—images never intended to become history, but which become historical precisely because they captured ordinary life as it was lived.
Building the house of memory
Preservation also requires a physical home. MSFDS has therefore invested in developing archival infrastructure at SN Chand Cine Archive & Museum, which today houses an air-conditioned film vault, a film conservation laboratory, a photo gallery and a museum display hall.
The museum has also acquired rare vintage celluloid-era post-production equipment, including Steenbeck editing machines, Moviola equipment, sound-transfer systems and other historic film-editing devices.
The display gallery is currently being renovated to present these artefacts more effectively and to make the technological history of cinema accessible to the public.
But the most important objects in an archive are not always the most spectacular.
Sometimes they are small reels sitting quietly in a box.
A few hundred feet of 8mm film can contain a wedding, a festival, a landscape, a procession, a village, a face, a custom—or an entire way of life that has vanished.
Saving what time cannot replace
The proposed preservation of the 15 reels associated with Maharaj Kumar Priyabrata Singh and Kongbrailatpam Ibohal Sharma consequently carries a meaning beyond the technical achievement of digitisation.
It represents an attempt to recover a part of Manipur’s visual memory from the fragile edge of disappearance.
If Priyabrata Singh’s camera was among the earliest independent cameras to look extensively at Manipur and its way of life, then preserving what it saw is also a way of preserving the beginnings of the state’s cinematic gaze.
That makes the proposed Bologna collaboration a significant moment in Manipur’s film heritage journey.
The work undertaken by MSFDS over the past five years—from the establishment of SNCCAM and professional training to the restoration of Brojendragee Luhongba, Ishanou and Imagi Ningthem, and the digitisation of other feature and documentary films—has gradually created the foundations of a preservation culture in the state.
The journey, however, is far from over.
Thousands of photographs, film reels, videotapes, documents and other audiovisual materials may still be lying in private homes, institutions and forgotten cupboards across Manipur. Some may contain images that no archive knows exist.
The clock is already running on them. Film does not wait for posterity.
The work of preservation is therefore not simply about keeping old movies alive. It is about keeping alive the evidence of who we were—the faces, landscapes, traditions, celebrations and everyday lives that formed the Manipur of another time. And perhaps, in those little 8mm reels, lies a Manipur that has never before been properly seen.
