The prints of her films are in a questionable state, but the Directorate of Film Festivals is not interested in reviving the

In Shyam Benegal’s 1977 film Bhumika, Smita Patil plays a fiercely independent Marathi film actress Usha Dhalvi, who has her own set of rules, especially when it comes to the men in her life. She charms the men and the audience with her sultry, seductive, and piercing eyes, but her life remains tragic. It is terrific performance, spanning many years in the life of the protagonist and a high point in the short, but very prolific career of Patil.

Smita Patil’s films are part of our legacy, but we rarely get a chance to see them on a large screen

“She was only 21 when Bhumika was released,” says Manya Patil Seth, Patil’s younger sister, as we sit down to talk about Bhumika: The Roles of Smita Patil — an 11-film retrospective of the late actress’ films in New York City. Patil died at the age of 31. Today she would have been 55. “She had many more years of her career ahead of her,” Seth adds.

The festival was curated by the Mahendra Indo-American Arts Council Film Festival and the Film Society of Lincoln Center.

Seth who heads the Smita Patil Foundation in Mumbai helped procure the prints for the films.

We are sitting in the lobby of the Film Society’s Walter Reade Theater. The walls around us carry stark black and white photographs taken by Patil who was also an amateur photographer. There is a self portrait and many more private pictures, including a charming one where a young Om Puri is clipping the hair from his nose. Patil’s son and actor Prateik Babbar, who has his mother’s eyes, hovers around us, looking at the pictures, while waiting for his aunt to finish her conversation with me.

In a four-day period, I see six of Patil’s films — Manthan, Bhumika, Bhavni Bhavai, Mirch Masala, Sadgati and Chidambaram. I also get a chance to see Patil’s debut short film Teevra Madhyam (1974), directed by Arun Khopkar. It has been a hugely enriching experience revisiting classic films of my teenage years. Patil’s films are part of our legacy, but it is so rare to get a chance to see these films on a large screen.

The previous night, after the screening of Bhumika, Seth stood in the same lobby with her older sister Anita Patil Deshmukh who was visibly moved by seeing Patil on the screen. Babbar stood in the corner with a couple of friends, quietly observing the family’s private moment at a public gathering.

“I have been putting together this for a few months,” Seth later says, referring to the fact that revisiting Patil’s works takes its toll on the family. “I remember reading so much material over two or three days and then I felt very low. I realised that it gets you down.”

Next year is Patil’s 25th death anniversary and Seth hopes to create a multi-city retrospective of her films, but the prints are in a questionable state. For the New York retrospective, Seth brought a few prints from the Directorate of Film Festivals (DFF). Others came from the National Film Archives in Pune. Benegal gave his personal copy of the Manthan print. Sadgati’s mint condition print was acquired from the Satyajit Ray Film and Study Center at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

“The DFF is supposed to hold all the prints of films that go to film festivals and win national awards, but the prints wear out,” Seth says. “They have to keep taking new prints, but for that you need negatives. Most of the negatives have been destroyed. No one preserved them. And many of the producers do not have duplicates.”

Seth has been on many missions including identifying the producers. A couple of years ago she found some French interest in providing training for people to restore the films. “But no one in DFF was interested,” she says.

The Foundation has housed all of Patil’s pictures and the negatives in a temperature controlled storage space at the IIT, Mumbai. At some stage Seth wants to produce a book of the pictures.

“I wanted Prateik to grow up,” Patil says. “Whatever she has done is primarily his legacy. I wanted him to discover his mother, have a say and participate in the process.”