SACF Completes The Merchant Ivory Heritage Project

South Asian Cinema Foundation ( SACF) successfully completed its two year film project titled: ‘Merchant – Ivory Indo-British period films & documentaries.

This film history project researched and examined relevant Merchant Ivory films and documentaries that fell within this category.

During the Project SACF recruited a diverse group of community volunteers and encouraged and involved them in the Project’s activities and events.

To equip volunteers with relevant skills, they were offered online learning opportunities in film research, proofreading for its book/ portraiture and preparing and recording oral history interviews and screenwriting.

Three Merchant Ivory films Heat and Dust (1983), Shakespeare Wallah (1966) and In Custody (1993) were screened at the British Film Institute. 

SACF published a book and an e book ‘A Biographical Dictionary of Merchant Ivory Film Wallahs’ written by Kusum Pant Joshi and Lalit Mohan Joshi with a foreword by Farrukh Dhondy.  

A documentary ‘Merchant Ivory Film Wallahs’ directed by Lalit Mohan Joshi was also produced.   

Besides offering learning opportunities, Project Volunteers were encouraged and supported to engage with, participate and contribute to all Project activities, events and outcomes/ products. They were also prominently credited for their contribution and input into the Project.

With funding from UK’s prestigious Heritage Lottery Fund, SACF began its first Indo-British film project in 2011. It was focussed on an Indian film veteran Niranjan Pal  who had ventured into silent films in the UK and made a mark in talking films as well as documentary filmmaking in India. Titled: ‘Lifting the Curtain: Niranjan Pal & Indo-British Collaboration in Cinema (1908-1931)’, this Project uncovered films that are landmarks in the history of Indo-British and Indian cinema.

The second Project which began in 2015 was titled: ‘A Hidden Heritage: Indo- British film collaboration in the UK (1930-1951)’.