The Nair whom we met and became friends with in his final years was often wickedly funny in his devastating putdowns.
Nair watched Lang’s flickering ancestor to Indiana Jones projected on his living room wall for more than an hour, absolutely contented throughout. With him, we watched the first part of Fritz Lang’s adventure serial The Spiders on a handheld digital projector (we happened to have the film on the hard drive, and he’d not seen it before). In bearing witness to one small vignette in Nair’s life we must report the warmth and kindness with which the elderly gentleman invited two film fans and would-be scholars off the street and into his small apartment. It’s no surprise that on his passing, many things about his personal and professional relationships seem unresolved, and in some ways saddening. Nair’s life’s work was always going to remain unfinished. While at 80 years old, Nair was sometimes slow in gathering his thoughts and in replying, what he had to say was expressed in dignified, precise paragraphs of intense and deeply humane insight – not only observations about cinema but about Indian history and culture, and about the human condition. We could easily have made an entire series of radio programmes from this material. We edited over five hours of conversation over several days down to a 25-minute sequence aired last year on London’s arts radio station Resonance FM. We find now that we’re in the unexpected, and in some ways unwelcome, situation of having recorded the last long interview with Nair, on films and on his legacy. Three years ago, Nair discussed his thoughts about cinema with us, a conversation that we also recorded and broadcast with his permission. He became the face of Indian cinema for the West, but did not use it for the advancement of his career.” I only hope he has transmitted some of his passion to the younger generation.”įilmmaker and writer Nasreen Munni Kabir told Scroll.in: “He was preserving the legacy of the country, not his own. And it is more remarkable that he is single-handedly responsible for conserving India’s rich cinematic heritage. Nair, Yesterday’s Films for Tomorrow, on the anniversary of his birth in April 2017.įilm director Shyam Benegal told the Hindu newspaper: “No one before him had shown any interest in preserving cinema. India’s Film Heritage Foundation will publish a compilation of the writings of P.K. Celluloid Man is available in the UK on DVD from Second Run.
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