Serge Bromberg at a city hotel. Picture by Pradip Sanyal

Cinemawallah Salim. A Telegraph picture

When Serge Bromberg was but a child, his father brought home a Super 8 projector and played the trailer of Charlie Chaplin’s A Night in the Show. Thus was lit the first spark of a lifelong quest to find lost films, restore them and play them the world over.

So, as soon as the Frenchman, in Calcutta for his celebrated Retour de Flamme cine-concert — he plays the piano as pre-World War I silent films play out on the screen — learnt about the city’s most famous projectionist, Cinemawallah Salim, his eyes lit up.

“I have to see the documentary (Tim Sternberg’s Oscar-nominated short Salim Baba) first and then get in touch with him,” an excited Bromberg told Metro. “It is quite awesome how someone in India still projects cinema like this. While multiplexes and other modern technologies have taken cinema away from the audiences, it’s people like Salim who have been able to keep cinema alive, as it was meant to be.”

What has drawn the 45-year-old Parisian to the 52-year-old man living in penury on Marcus Road is the filmi legacy. Salim uses a 110-year-old Japanese projector and still has all the reels his father used to project on the streets of north Calcutta.

“I am always on the lookout for old films, fiction or non-fiction, from any country and India should have its share,” says Bromberg, rolling some old nitrate film stock in his hand. “I hope people can give up old prints and get them restored. At the end of every show, I invite people to give me such lost prints, so that I can restore them for the world to see.”

Bromberg’s had the Mumbai edition of the cine-concert last Saturday and the 2,000-odd people who turned up at the Asiatic Library went ga-ga over the Frenchman’s priceless collection of films, including a documentary on Gwalior made in 1908.

The “pure magic offered by a mad lover of old print” promises to wow Calcuttans too, as Bromberg takes the stage — and the piano — at the St Paul’s Cathedral lawns on Tuesday evening.

“Those expecting dust spots, frame jitter and line scratches will be pleasantly surprised as they will see images as clean as a new film,” promised Bromberg.

As for Mohammad Salim, with two weeks to go for the Oscars, he is confident of Salim Baba’s success — “prize to mera picture hi jeetega”, he smiles — though he has been kept in the dark by its makers.