He hid thousands of reels of footage showcasing Afghanistan’s rich cultural history, knowing that if the Taleban found out he faced certain death. “If they had found out we had hidden movies they would have killed us.”The ultra-conservative Taleban – who banned popular entertainment, including cinema and music, during their brutal 1996-2001 rule – burned several movie reels before leaving. But they failed to discover some 7,000 precious films that Ali and his colleagues hid in various places across the Kabul premises of Afghan Film. ‘All sorts of tricks’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. “The reels were hidden in cans marked Indian or Western movies and in barrels buried in the ground,” Arify explains.

Source: The Nation Bangkok September 08, 2017 18:08 UTC