We have to view films as our heritage and not just as entertainment," Sharmila Tagore, who got her start in the film industry at the age of 13 with the final instalment of Satyajit Ray's Apu trilogy, explained while pointing out the various reasons as to why classic Indian films were not being archived properly. While the restored Apu trilogy has now been screened in various cities across the globe, thereby fulfilling Ray's wish of his work living on forever, Tagore talked about the many steps that still need to be taken to preserve films.

Sharing her experience of watching the restored version of the Apu trilogy, Sharmila Tagore recalls, "Recently, the restored Apu trilogy was screened in Los Angeles. I got so overwhelmed after seeing the crowd's reaction that when I was asked to come on stage, I could not speak for a while. Then I said that it was quite an achievement for a Bengali to have nothing to say. After the screening, one of the members of the restoration team took me to see where they stored their film reels. It was an air-conditioned room and the reels were properly labelled. In the event that there is a power cut or load-shedding, they have a back-up plan to cope with it. We are, after all, talking about Los Angeles. In Kolkata or Delhi, unfortunately, there are no such facilities for the preservation of our films."

When filmmaker Shivendra Singh Dungarpur, who has teamed up with Hollywood director Martin Scorsese to restore classic India films, pointed out that the National Films Archive of India (NFAI) cannot restore all the prints on its own and should be assisted by the state governments, Sharmila replied, "When I was the CBFC (Central Board of Film Certification) chairperson, we received a circular which requested every producer to provide one film reel to the NFAI's archive. The NFAI, however, does not store these films properly. Why should a producer then bear that kind of an expense, when there is no guarantee that the film will be kept safely? Restoration work should be done by an autonomous body which is passionate about films. We can be polite about it and not offend any party, but how will that help, if, in the end, we are not able to preserve our movies?" actors should help out The actress also emphasised the need for actors to bear the expenses of restoring movies. She said, "Before the 90s, nobody had that kind of money (to help out with such projects), except for a few producers and distributors. Now, many actors have a lot of money, including Amitabh Bachchan, Shah Rukh Khan and Akshay Kumar. While they are promoting various important things, they could perhaps look at the preservation of films as well. Though I am sure they're so busy that no one has approached them for it."