Thousands of hours of footage, hidden from the militants, are being digitised

When the Taliban charged in to Afghanistan’s state-run film company in the mid-1990s intent on destroying all the movies, Habibullah Ali risked everything to save them.

He hid thousands of reels of footage showcasing Afghanistan’s rich cultural history, knowing that if the Taliban found out, he faced certain death.

Taliban burned several movie reels before leaving in 2001.

7,000 films

But they failed to discover some 7,000 precious films that Mr. Ali and his colleagues hid in various places across the Kabul premises of Afghan Film.

Two decades later, those reels, which include long-lost movies and documentary images of Afghanistan before it was ravaged by violence, are being made available to watch again through digitisation.

The years-long project will bring back to life hugely popular Afghan feature films, centred on love rather than war, and introduce young Afghans to a side of their country they’ve never known — peace.

The digitisation of the footage — of which there are tens of thousands of hours — is being overseen by Afghan Film general director Mohammad Ibrahim Arify.

Mr. Arify said they have 32,000 hours of 16-millimetre film and 8,000 hours of 35-mm film, but cataloguing is still ongoing, as members of the public continue to hand in movies that they themselves hid from the Taliban.

The project began this year and Mr. Arify hopes the entire library can be completed within two years.

Afghanistan’s state-produced movies of the 1970s were hugely popular among Afghans. The Farsi and Pashto-language films focused on themes of romance, culture and friendship.

The documentary footage dates from the 1920s to the late 1970s.

Afghan Film hopes broadcasters will air the old movies and footage, while a private media group has plans to make a web channel.