What we found while checking the films

Every page here is built by reading the film's article, the specialist film archive, and where we hold the print, the censor card in its opening frames. Those three disagree with each other more often than you would expect. 32 of those disagreements, and some conclusions about our own method, are recorded below with the evidence for each.

Findings about a single film are also printed on that film’s own page, directly under the link to the source they are about, so a reader about to follow the link is told before they go.

About the catalogue as a whole

• We found this

  The 2,694 films we serve from the Internet Archive live in just 324 uploaded items. One item alone holds 163 different films, which is why an item's name says nothing about what is inside it.

  How we know

  Counted from the download URLs of every stored derivative. The item named barsaat-ki-ek-raat-1981 contains, among others, Bombay to Goa and Ek Nazar.

• We found this

  The Bombay censor board's certificate numbers rise with the date, which makes a number a way of dating a print - but they are not strictly sequential, and the rate they advance at is not steady. Across the certificates read here the board issued anything from one to over twenty numbers a day, averaging about seven over the late 1970s. A number therefore places a print within months, not within days, and two pairs we have read are out of order altogether.

  How we know

  Measured across 32 certificates read from prints and records between 1969 and 1982. Trishul 87181 on 20 April 1978 to Kaala Patthar 90462 on 9 August 1979 is 3,281 numbers in 476 days, an average of 6.9 a day; shorter intervals in the same run differ from that average by more than a factor of ten, so the average cannot be interpolated to a given day. Two pairs invert outright and are recorded separately - Dharam Kanta against Bombay to Goa, and Aya Sawan Jhoom Ke against Kaala Patthar.

• We found this

  Ninety-five of the films here carry a censor certificate read from the print itself rather than copied from a database - the board's own document, in the opening frames.

  How we know

  Counted from stored certificates. Each was enlarged before transcription and checked against the position its number implies in the board's series.

• We found this

  Wikidata's film credits are reliable for who a person is and much less so for what a film says about them. In this catalogue alone its credits attached a dog, a fictional pig from a television comedy, a football manager and a sprinter.

  How we know

  Every automatically created person page was tested against the entity's own P31 and P106 claims. Soccer (Q7550288) is recorded as a dog and Arnold Ziffel (Q4795320) as a fictional pig; Jock Stein (Q355378) is a football manager and Nancy Mackay (Q248950) a sprinter.

• We found this

  Two of the performers credited here are not people. Soccer, the dog who played Wishbone, and Arnold Ziffel, the pig from Green Acres, both hold genuine screen credits. We keep the credit, because it is true, and give neither a biography page, because that would claim they were people.

  How we know

  Tested against each entity's own Wikidata P31: Q7550288 is recorded as a dog and Q4795320 as a fictional pig and television character. Both credits match the works they are attached to - Wishbone and Green Acres.

• We found this

  All 987 automatically created person pages were checked against the entity's own record. Nine failed, and of those only four look like the wrong person being credited - under half a percent. Wikidata's weakness is not who people are but what a film says about them.

  How we know

  Each page was tested for P31 human and for a film-related P106 occupation, one document fetch per entity. Of the nine: two were non-human performers with correct credits, three were sound credits my own occupation list failed to allow for, and four are candidate namesakes awaiting the films' real casts.

• We found this

  63 works here were matched to a television series or franchise rather than to themselves, and took on that whole container's cast - 224 credits in all. The 1983 Five Doctors was given the cast of Doctor Who across forty years, four of whom had not been born when it aired.

  How we know

  Each of the 825 Wikidata entities this catalogue matches a work to was read for its own P31. Those reporting a series, franchise or collection rather than a film or episode are counted here.

• We found this

  72 credits on individual television episodes here were the whole series' cast and crew, inherited because the episode had been matched to the series rather than to itself. They are now shown as series regulars, which is what we can actually vouch for. The 1983 Five Doctors was carrying four performers born after it was broadcast.

  How we know

  Every entity this catalogue matches a work to was read for its own Wikidata P31. Where that entity is a series and the video's own title names a single episode, the credits were the container's.

• We found this

  The censor board's certificate numbers do not run strictly in order of issue date. Reading the prints turned up two pairs that cannot both be sequential - Dharam Kanta's 100598 of July 1982 against Bombay to Goa's 100777 of May 1982, and Aya Sawan Jhoom Ke's 91108 of July 1979 against Kaala Patthar's 90462 of that August. Numbers were most likely assigned when a film was submitted and the certificate issued some variable time later.

  How we know

  All four numbers were read from the films themselves and enlarged four times before transcription. The run is monotonic across the other certificates held, which is what makes these two pairs informative rather than merely untidy.

• We found this

  A film's censor rating cannot be worked out from what the film is about. Among the films here, Jaani Dushman - a horror picture in which a new bride is murdered on every wedding night - was passed A, while Nagin, in which a serpent-woman kills six men one by one, was passed U. The Great Gambler was A and Don was U. Andhaa Kaanoon was A and Krodhi was U. The board was answering what was on the screen, which a plot summary never mentions.

  How we know

  Certificates for 122 films were read from the films' own censor cards or from indiancine.ma: 113 U, 7 A and 2 UA. The pairs above match on genre, on structure and on the tier of their casts, and differ in certificate. A rule drawn from the seven A films classifies Nagin, Don and Krodhi as A, and all three carry a U certificate read from the print.

• We found this

  A surprising share of the Hindi cinema here is European and American material arriving at two or three removes. Do Kaliyaan is The Parent Trap, which was Erich Kastner's 1949 German novel, reaching Hindi through a Tamil remake. Gumnaam is Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None. Gora Aur Kala is Dumas's The Corsican Brothers, again via Tamil. Inkaar is Kurosawa's High and Low, which was itself an Ed McBain novel. Chori Chori is It Happened One Night, and Bees Saal Baad is The Hound of the Baskervilles by way of a Bengali novel and a Bengali film.

  How we know

  Each chain is stated on the film's own page and sourced from its article. Six of the first forty films written in this wave carry one, which is a higher proportion than the industry's reputation for borrowing would suggest, and the intermediate step is almost always another Indian language rather than a direct lift.

• We found this

  The research behind these pages was being written to a directory the machine erases on reboot. 193 censor contact sheets, representing about two and a half hours of paced requests to the Internet Archive, and a 118,566-item index of the Board's own certificate collection, were one restart away from having to be rebuilt from scratch.

  How we know

  tmpfiles.d carries a D directive for /tmp on this host, which empties it at boot. 76MB of irreplaceable working data was sitting there. It is now held on the server's persistent disk and copied to the storage box, with both copies verified by checksum rather than by file size.

• We found this — in indiancine.ma

  The censor dates in indiancine.ma are either the film's own or a re-certification a decade later, and never anything in between. Of 169 held films carrying a dated certificate, 129 are dated within the film's release year and 8 the year before - and not one is dated between one and six years after. The rest cluster at seven to thirteen years later and at twenty to twenty-five. So where a date sits on the film's own year it can be trusted as the original card, and where it does not, it is a later certification rather than a sloppy approximation of the original.

  How we know

  Counted over every held film with both a certificate date and a known year: gap of -1 year, 8 films; 0 years, 129; +1 to +6 years, zero; +7, 1; +10, 11; +11, 8; +12, 1; +13, 1; +20, 6; +21, 3; +25, 1. 81% fall in or before the release year. The empty band between +1 and +6 is what makes the two populations separable.

• We found this — in indiancine.ma

  The censor board numbered its certificates separately at each regional centre, and the runs overlap. Madras's numbers in the 1980s fall in the same range Bombay had reached in the late 1970s - so a Madras certificate read against a Bombay series dates a film seven years too early, and looks entirely plausible doing it. Four films here were being mis-dated that way until the centre was taken into account. Read as their own run, the Madras numbers are consistent and date each other.

  How we know

  All 44 censor cards this catalogue has photographed off prints were issued at Bombay. Applying that series to Madras and Chennai numbers placed Bandish (1980) at 1977, Maqsad (1984) at 1977, Pataal Bhairavi (1985) at 1978 and Charnon Ki Saugandh (1988) at 1978. Their own recorded dates are 7 October 1980, 30 April 1984, 22 April 1985 and 12 April 1988 - and the numbers 82367, 86426, 87224 and 88663 run in the same order as those dates, so the Madras run checks itself. Across the held certificates the centre is recorded as Bombay or Mumbai 144 times and as Madras or Chennai 10 times.

• We found this and did not publish it

  WITHHELD: that a television producer, a television director and a marionetteist held film credits here. It reads as a finding about them and is a defect in our own test.

  How we know

  The occupation gate's allowed set contained 'television actor' but neither 'television producer' nor 'television director' nor any puppetry role, while the catalogue holds 158 Dark Shadows items. Scott Hornbacher directs television, Irving J. Moore directed television and Gudmundur Thor Karason is a LazyTown puppeteer. All three credits are sound; the test was wrong.

About particular films and people

• Seeta Aur Geeta (1972) — indiancine.ma certificate.date

  The certificate date recorded here, 10 October 1972, does not fit this film's certificate number. We have not established the correct date, so the recorded one stands with this note against it.

  How we know

  Certificate 67517 is lower than Ek Nazar's 70366, which was read from that film's own print and is dated 22 July 1972. A lower number cannot have been issued almost three months after a higher one, so the recorded October date is wrong. Unlike Aashirwad, no day and month exchange repairs it: 10-10 reads the same both ways, which is why no corrected date is offered here.

• Aashirwad (1968) — indiancine.ma certificate.date

  The certificate date recorded here reads 5 March 1979. Its number, 89774, is higher than one we have read off another print dated later than that, so 5 March cannot be right. Read the other way round the same figures give 3 May - a day and month exchanged.

  How we know

  Jhoota Kahin Ka's certificate 89468 was read from its own print and is dated 27 March 1979. 89774 is the higher number, so it cannot have been issued three weeks before 89468 - which is what a date of 5 March would require. That argument rests only on the numbers rising with the date, not on any rate of issue. Reading the recorded figures as 3 May 1979 puts it after 89468 and resolves it.

• Ek Nazar (1972) — censor-card certificate.survival

  This film's censor card survives on only two of the eight copies in circulation. The other six masters begin after it, on black or a studio logo.

  How we know

  All eight encodes were read at one frame per second for the opening twenty seconds. Rungs 0 to 5 open on black or a logo; the card appears only on rungs 6 and 7, giving certificate 70366 of 22 July 1972.

• Bombay to Goa (1972) — censor-card certificate.is_recertification

  The print we serve opens on a Re-Certification Certificate issued on 25 May 1982 - ten years after the film's release. It is not the original 1972 certificate, so what survives here is a re-issued print.

  How we know

  Read from the film's own censor card in the opening frames of the print we serve. The words Re-Certification Certificate are printed on the card itself; number 100777, 3922.79 metres, 15 reels, Bombay.

• Aya Sawan Jhoom Ke (1969) — censor-card certificate.series_conflict

  This print's certificate, 91108, is dated 16 July 1979, and Kaala Patthar's, 90462, is dated 9 August 1979. A lower number should not carry the later date. Both were read from the films themselves, so one is misread and we have not established which.

  How we know

  Both numbers were enlarged four times before being transcribed. This card's ten-year expiry, 15 July 1989, is internally consistent with its issue date. The Bombay U series runs in order across the other 32 certificates held, which is what makes the pair irreconcilable rather than merely odd.

• Insaan (1982) — en.wikipedia.org

  Wikipedia gives Insaan's six years in production half a sentence, and leaves the consequence unsaid: three of its five songs are sung by Mohammed Rafi, who died in July 1980, so those recordings are at least two years older than the film's 1982 release.

  How we know

  Wikipedia: 'The film was launched in 1976 but faced several delays due to Khanna going to the US, and many other issues.' Release date 25 June 1982. Rafi died 31 July 1980 and is credited on three songs in the article's own soundtrack table.

• Faisla (1988) — en.wikipedia.org

  Wikipedia credits no lyricist for Faisla at all. The songs are Majrooh Sultanpuri's.

  How we know

  Cinemaazi's catalogue entry, from the press booklet, records 'Lyrics: Majrooh Sultanpuri'. Wikipedia's soundtrack section says only 'All songs are music by R. D. Burman' and names no writer.

• Faisla (1988) — en.wikipedia.org

  Wikipedia's plot summary and the film's own press booklet describe materially different stories. Wikipedia says the convicts escaped to avenge the rape and death of a daughter; the booklet synopsis says nothing of the kind and has them stumbling into a palace. We have not seen the print and do not claim to know which is right.

  How we know

  Wikipedia: 'Three convicts escape from prison to avenge the rape and death of one of their daughter'. Cinemaazi's synopsis, taken from the press booklet, has three escaped prisoners taking refuge in a palace with a blind princess and two rival suitors, and no such motive.

• Faisla (1988) — en.wikipedia.org

  Wikipedia presents Faisla as a 1988 film and credits Mohammed Rafi as a singer on it, with no production history to explain how that is possible. Rafi died on 31 July 1980. The film was begun in the 1970s under the title Aaj Raat Ko, abandoned, and finished years later.

  How we know

  Mohammed Rafi died 31 July 1980. The censor certificate, U-9197-MUM, is dated 25 January 1988 (cinemaazi, from the film's press booklet). Wikipedia's own soundtrack table credits Rafi with 'Champa Khili Daar, Palak Jhoole Pyaar'. The article carries no note on the delay at all.

• Hum Dono (1961) — indiancine.ma

  indiancine.ma credits Hum Dono's story to Nirmal Sircar alone, and does not name Tarashankar Bandyopadhyay or his novel Uttarayan anywhere in the record. Dev Anand bought the film rights from Bandyopadhyay himself. Both sources are partly right: Sircar adapted it, Bandyopadhyay wrote it - and only one of them says so.

  How we know

  Wikipedia: 'Based on Uttarayan (a novel) by Tarashankar Bandyopadhyay', and records that Dev Anand bought the rights from Bandyopadhyay. indiancine.ma's record for the film (JWX) lists story and st as 'Nirmal Sircar' and has no field naming Bandyopadhyay.

• Hum Dono (1961) — indiancine.ma

  indiancine.ma records three certificate numbers for Hum Dono and one date, 20 December 1961 - ten months after the film opened on 4 February 1961. A film is not released in India before it is passed, so either the original certificate is not in the archive and this date belongs to a re-certification, or the opening date is wrong. The opening date has independent support, so the certificate date is the doubtful one.

  How we know

  indiancine.ma record JWX: censorshipcertificatenumber 'U-34336-MUM, U-64525-MUM, U-100285-MUM', dateofcensorcertificate '1961-12-20'. Wikipedia gives the release as 4 February 1961, and the colourised reissue was dated 4 February 2011 and promoted as falling exactly fifty years after the premiere - two separate records agreeing on 4 February. Read against the 44 censor cards this catalogue has photographed off prints, the other two numbers place around 1971 and 1982, so neither of them can carry a 1961 date either.

• Gumrah (1963) — en.wikipedia.org

  Wikipedia credits Gumrah's script to 'B. R. Films (Story Department)' and names no writer. The dialogue is by Akhtar-ul-Iman, one of the significant modern Urdu poets, who is not mentioned in the article at all.

  How we know

  indiancine.ma's record for the film credits dialogue to 'Akhtar Ul Iman' and writer to 'Akhtar-ul-Iman'. Wikipedia's infobox gives writer as 'B. R. Films (Story Department)' and its prose names only the composer and lyricist.

• Patthar Aur Payal (1974) — en.wikipedia.org

  Wikipedia's article on Patthar Aur Payal has an empty writer field and credits nobody with the script. It was written by Rahi Masoom Raza - the novelist of Aadha Gaon, who later wrote the screenplay of B. R. Chopra's Mahabharat. He is one of the most consequential writers Hindi cinema had, and the article does not mention him.

  How we know

  indiancine.ma's record for the film credits him as writer. Wikipedia's infobox carries 'writer =' with nothing after it, and its prose names only the director, producer and cast. He has eleven other films in this catalogue, among them Mili, Karz, Nikaah and Disco Dancer.

• Bees Saal Baad (1988) — en.wikipedia.org

  Wikipedia cannot decide what year this film is from. Its article is titled 'Bees Saal Baad (1989 film)' and gives a release date of 3 February 1989; its own disambiguation page lists the same film, by cast, as 'Bees Saal Baad (1988 film)'. The film archive records 1988. Both are probably right about different things: this catalogue has found that eight of its films carry a censor certificate dated the year before release, and a film passed in 1988 and released in February 1989 fits that exactly.

  How we know

  Wikipedia's article: 'Bees Saal Baad ... is a 1989 Hindi-language Indian horror film', release date 3 February 1989. Its disambiguation page lists the Mithun Chakraborty film as 1988. indiancine.ma's record (ACNQ) gives year 1988. Across 169 held films with a dated certificate, 8 are certified in the calendar year before the release year, so the two dates are consistent rather than contradictory.

• 36 Ghante (1974) — en.wikipedia.org

  Wikipedia's article on 36 Ghante names no lyricist and no writer at all. The songs are Sahir Ludhianvi's - one of the major Urdu poets of the century, and the most-represented lyricist in this catalogue with twelve films.

  How we know

  The article's infobox has empty writer and lyricist fields and its prose names only the director, composer and cast. Other listings of the soundtrack credit the lyrics to Sahir Ludhianvi, with Kishore Kumar, Asha Bhosle, Mahendra Kapoor and Mukesh singing.

• the catalogue — wikidata P569

  Wikidata records Chitra Singh as born in 2000. She composed the score of Arth with Jagjit Singh in 1982, eighteen years earlier, and was recording ghazals through the 1970s. The credit is sound; the birth year is not.

  How we know

  Arth (1982) credits Jagjit Singh and Chitra Singh as its music directors, and she sings Too Nahin To Zindagi Mein on it. A date gate testing credits against lifespans flagged the pair as impossible, and reading the film settled which half was wrong.

• the catalogue — wikidata P569

  Wikidata records Gita Siddharth as born in 2000, and credits her in five films released between 1979 and 1987 - Noorie, Shaukeen, Disco Dancer, Zabardast and Nazrana. She was an established actress of the 1970s; the birth year is wrong.

  How we know

  Five separate film statements place her on screen between 1979 and 1987. A single wrong credit is plausible; five across eight years, all consistent with each other and none with the birth year, locates the error in the date.