The collections of late B D Garga are being curated into a digital archive

Born in Punjab in 1924, Garga had a fascination for images, first still and later moving

At a gathering of film historians in Venice in 1964, an India delegate felt uneasy because none of the urgent matters discussed seemed relevant to the situation back home where film research was still new. When someone asked him to acquaint them with the state of cinema in the country, he delivered an impassioned speech, stating how the Lumiere Cinématographe had come to Bombay mere months after its Europe debut and introducing “Phalke’s genius for the fantastic” as being “on a par with Georges Méliès’”. The art form’s continued affinity to theatrical conventions was worth studying, he pointed out. Despite