Negative of Kazi Nazrul Islam’s film 'Dhruva' destroyed, says Kolkata’s NT1 Studio

Kolkata's historic NT1 Studio has confirmed that the original negative of Kazi Nazrul Islam's only directed feature, "Dhruva", has been irretrievably lost. Studio director Sougata Nandi told Prothom Alo that the nitrate elements have deteriorated beyond repair and cannot be restored.

Made 91 years ago, "Dhruva" (1934) is the sole film Kazi Nazrul Islam directed—co-helmed with Satyendranath Dey—and is widely noted in Bengali cinema history for placing the national poet behind the camera as both director and actor. 

The sound-era feature, adapted from Girish Chandra Ghosh's play "Bhakta Dhruva", opened in 1934 in Calcutta (then Kolkata). Contemporary references list the film under Pioneer Film Corporation/Madan Theatres, with Nazrul credited as director alongside Satyendranath Dey. 

How did the negative end up at NT1? The studio—established in 1931—retained many legacy negatives in its laboratory over decades. But as archivists know, cellulose nitrate stock is volatile: it demands constant, cool storage and, at elevated temperatures, can self-ignite. NT1 has suffered fires more than once, and by Nandi's account, the "Dhruva" elements were already in dire condition. "They could not be saved; restoration is no longer possible," he said. 

Nandi added that "Dhruva" may once have been on the preservation list of the National Film Archive of India (NFAI), though the title does not currently appear on the archive's public website. (NFAI's online catalogue is incomplete, and many early Bengali titles remain unlisted there.

Family and institutions in Bangladesh report similar gaps. Nazrul's granddaughter, singer Khilkhil Kazi, has said the family does not hold a print. Dhaka's Kabi Nazrul Institute has none of Nazrul's films in its collection. Bangladesh Film Archive, however, is understood to hold a single reel—approximately 10 minutes—of "Dhruva", and brief black-and-white clips circulate online; a complete version has yet to surface. (Bangladesh Film Archive has long acknowledged the fragility of pre-partition film holdings and the difficulty of reconstructing complete prints.) 

The loss underlines a broader, well-documented crisis with nitrate-era South Asian cinema: thousands of titles are incomplete or gone, the casualties of climate, neglect and the chemistry of nitrate itself. Preservation experts have repeatedly warned that nitrate requires strict temperature and humidity controls to slow decomposition and prevent combustion—conditions rarely available to commercial labs once production moved on to newer stocks. 

Even with the negative gone, "Dhruva" retains a central place in Nazrul studies and Bengali film history. Beyond directing, Nazrul acted in the talkie and contributed creatively to a film that bridged theatre and early sound cinema—an achievement scholars still consider rare for a literary titan working inside the studio system of the 1930s.

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