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PM Narendra Modi will Saturday inaugurate the film museum in Mumbai. Bollywood stars Amitabh Bachchan and Akshay Kumar are also set to attend.

New Delhi: After a delay of over two decades, the National Museum of Indian Cinema (NMIC) in Mumbai is finally going to be inaugurated Saturday by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Bollywood stars Amitabh Bachchan and Akshay Kumar are among those who will attend the event, said sources in the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting.

Conceived in 1997, the first-of-its-kind project met with multiple hurdles over the last two decades and missed several deadlines for inauguration — the last one in the middle of 2018.

The I&B Ministry has agreed to go ahead with the Saturday event — a move that can be counted as one of the successes of the NDA government before the general elections — disregarding an ‘adverse report’ by a panel last year.

The museum

The museum, built in two phases, is housed in two adjacent buildings.

The first one is in the freshly-restored heritage building Gulshan Mahal on the Films Division’s premises on Peddar Road. It will display a rare collection of static artefacts, vintage equipment, various memorabilia and other exhibits to take visitors through India’s over-a-century-old cinematic journey.

The second part of the museum is housed in a modern building next to Gulshan Mahal. It will have over 40 interactive galleries devoted to cinema across India, the journey of Indian cinema from the silent era to talkies, technology and creativity in cinema as well as a children’s activity gallery.

The project has been implemented by the Films Division, a media unit under the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, while the National Council of Science Museums (NCSM), an autonomous body under the Ministry of Culture, has designed the museum.

Also read: Indian film museum project in Mumbai is turning out to be a movie that is not ending

Delay over the years

The restoration of Gulshan Mahal began in 1998, but the work was stopped later and revived only in 2012.

PILs filed by neighbouring housing societies and civic clearances contributed in the massive delay of the project.

The museum was ready for inauguration in 2013 to commemorate the centenary of Indian cinema, but was delayed again. Last year, too, it was scheduled to be inaugurated by the prime minister.

However, weeks ahead of the inauguration, an ‘innovation committee’ constituted by previous I&B Minister Smriti Irani, comprising Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) chief Prasoon Joshi, CBFC member Vani Tripathi, among other experts, submitted an ‘adverse report’ on the project.

The panel made several recommendations, including shifting of the museum to the Film City area of Goregaon suburb for better footfalls, involving multiple experts in curating the museum, giving better representations to regional cinema and other aspects of cinema such as lyrics, poetry, and script in the museum.

An earlier panel — the Museum Advisory Committee chaired by noted filmmaker Shyam Benegal — had said otherwise. It had submitted that the museum was going to be ready for opening by end of 2017.

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