From old-time silent movies to recent blockbusters, all will feature in the state-of-the-art National Museum of Indian Cinema (NMIC) in Mumbai, which will be inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday.

Conceived in 1997, the first-of-its-kind project pulled through multiple hurdles over the last two decades and missed several deadlines. The last deadline was missed in the middle of 2018. The museum has been built at a cost of Rs 140.61 crore by the NBCC of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA).

The museum is housed in two buildings — the New Museum Building and the 19th century historic palace Gulshan Mahal — on the Films Division campus in Mumbai. Bollywood stars Amitabh Bachchan and Akshay Kumar are among those who will attend the event. The displays showcase the journey of over a hundred years of the Indian cinema.

The museum was conceived in 1997. The restoration of Gulshan Mahal, where Films Division was born in 1948, started in 1998, along with building a collection of exhibits. However, various complications kept on impeding the process. The plan was revived in 2012, the year the Indian cinema turned 100. The museum, including a new building, was to come up by 2014 but a series of changes in planning led to the delay. Last year too, it was scheduled to be inaugurated by the Prime Minister.

According to sources in the MoHUA, the creation of the museum has been guided by the Museum Advisory Committee headed by noted filmmaker Shyam Benegal. Kolkata-based National Council of Science Museums was entrusted with designing the museum and the galleries.

“The museum aims to take its visitors through an absorbing journey of over a century of Indian cinema in a story telling mode with the help of visuals, graphics, artifacts, interactive exhibits and multimedia expositions,” it said.

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 cinemas 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.

Set in an elegant 19th-century heritage bungalow in South Mumbai, the new museum building has four exhibition halls divided under the categories — Gandhi and cinema, children’s films, technology creativity and Indian cinema and cinema across India. The museum has five floors and two mezzanine floors accounting for a total built up area of 12,000 sq metres. It is divided into nine sections — the origin of cinema, cinema comes to India, Indian silent film, advent of sound, the studio era, the impact of World War II, creative resonance, new wave and beyond, and regional cinema.

An innovation committee headed by lyricist Prasoon Joshi has been constituted to provide an upgrade to NMIC. NBCC CMD Dr Anoop Kumar Mittal said completing a project that lies at the heart of a congested city, without compromising on the quality of construction, speaks volumes of NBCC’s capabilities and engineering expertise.

“In an endeavour to make the entire complex a potential ‘film hub’, the Victorian-Gothic era complex, which once drew luminaries to its musical soirées and cultural gatherings, is now well-equipped with modern amenities and facilities, including expansive auditoriums.

In addition to this, the complex houses a multi-purpose hall that has been designed to be used as a movie preview theatre and for social functions, conferences and other seminars,” Mittal said.