First Indian film museum to open in Bollywood city of Mumbai

Seven years in the making and costing nearly US$20 million, the first Indian film museum is set to open in the home of Bollywood, more than 100 years after the country's celebrated movie industry was born.

The government-funded National Museum of Indian Cinema, set in an elegant 19th-century heritage bungalow in south Mumbai, traces Indian cinema's history from the black-and-white silent era to its musical modern blockbusters.

"It's about time India had its own film museum," said curator Amrit Gangar. "We have archives, but not a museum and today a museum can become vibrant because of technology and interactivity."

Spread across two floors of the 6,000 sq ft building, the museum showcases original artefacts, memorabilia, recordings and film-making tools. Visitors can see an original painted poster for the 1957 epic Mother India and listen to songs by K.L. Saigal, considered the first superstar of Hindi film.

The idea is to celebrate not just Hindi-language Bollywood, but also films made in the various regions and languages across India, a country that produces nearly 1,500 movies a year.

"All the filmmaking centres of India have been represented," said Anil Kumar, head of marketing at the government's Films Division, who said the museum was ready and would open within the next few weeks.

The curators of the project were faced with big gaps in the country's rich cinema heritage - many of India's early films, for example, were not preserved.