For the public: 'Omit the plans of Nimmi who rested his head on Raj Kapoor's chest, loving gestures & # 39;

> "In movie 3, omit all the crazy song and mad imitations of college boys in the presence of women when Raj Kapoor and another boy enter the clbadroom, squatting under the floor, but omitting all dialogues between the two in this position. "

>" In the same film, omit all snapshots showing Nimmi (the character) resting his head on Raj Kapoor's chest and other loving gestures sitting on the beach at night next to the fisherman's hut. "

This is one of the detailed directions given by the censorship commission on Jan. 4, 1951 to the makers of the Aag maker, Raj Kapoor's first film, when the film was to be" revised. " and got a certificate 'U'.

And these are now available online.

They were published in a section titled "Censor Records Movie", which is part of a larger set of more than 2,500 pages of digitized film files and made available from Wednesday by the PNA, National Archive of Indian Film (NFAI), on its official website, in the form of government bulletins of Bombay and Bengal, 1920-1950.

Clbadified in six sections, these records include information on each film examined: name, number of reels, length, persons who applied for certification, who produced or broadcast them, country of origin, date of publication. Examination, number and date of certification. Digitization took place in 2009-2010, but was only available to visitors to the NFAI Library.

One of the first directives dates from 1925 – from Poona Raided, a silent film directed by Deccan Pictures Corporation and directed by B. Varerkar. Among the ordered scenes of suppression, there is one in which the Mughal commander Shahiste Khan refers to Shivaji during his raid on Poona: "The Crescent Moon! Who calls it Satan? He is the beloved of the Lord.

The description of the scene indicates that Shivaji then transforms into Lord Shankar with the crescent moon on his head and is transformed again into his original form into Shivaji. This scene and dialogue, which covers about thirty centimeters of reel, had to be cut off because of the "anti-imperialist metaphor" – the film was certified on August 15, 1924.

The recordings show that, in the pre-independence period,

The Volga Boatman, an American silent film produced and directed by Cecil B DeMille in 1926, was denied accreditation because it embodies "clbad hatred, Violence and degrading brutality accompanying the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. "

Addressing The Indian Express, NFAI Director Prakash Magdum, said:" These records are historical records of ancient Indian cinema and film. Indian film industry now available to the public. This database will be useful to film researchers who are interested in the first Indian cinema. "

The records also show that war films were under surveillance during the Second World War.I will never complain about Columbia Films of India in March 1942 because it" addresses the issue of the war in a vain comic and is bad for the war propaganda "

On July 23, 1942, the censorship commission asked China Fights Back: a war movie of RKO Radio Pictures, India, to" omit the scenes and the diagrams representing the Burma Road. "

These objections were raised by regional censorship councils, which operated under the then police chiefs in key cities such as Bombay, Calcutta, Madras and Lahore. Today, the films are certified by the Central Film Certification Office (CBFC), but some of the commissioned cuts still have an echo.

For example, records show that in November 1950, the jury ordo Born the withdrawal of a scene from the trailer of Born to be Bad for showing Joan Fontaine and Zachary Scott lying on a bed "intimate".

It has also happened that the board cancels certificates after their issuance. On June 8, 1942, he canceled a certificate issued to Marathi film Kiti Hasal after deciding that certain dialogues and part of a dance scene from the last reel were "objectionable". A new certificate was issued to "the revised version of the film" on February 18, 1943.

The records also show that scenes depicting the characters who smoke and drink are also deleted. On March 6, 1948, the Columbia Films of India's Columbia Films Relentless was asked to "suppress all scenes of actual consumption except one that is essential to continuity."