♪♪
-Archives are the identity of a country.
If the archives are not preserved,
the identity of the country is lost.
-This is our cultural heritage. Films show our history.
It shows the history of the governments we had.
-My name is Habibullah.
-My name is Nazifa. My last name is Hashemi.
-I am Rafiullah Azizi.
-My name is Sultan Mohammad Istalilfi.
♪♪
-Our focus is mostly on our movies, which, for a long time,
were in a very bad condition.
Every part of it, we, here, from when we come in until we leave,
[work] on repairing, cleaning, and checking.
♪♪
[ Woman singing in native language ]
Zari, it is the sound of hoofbeats.
-There is no sound.
♪♪
[ Horse approaching ]
♪♪
-It is the horse's clip-clop. Sharif is coming.
♪♪
-We started working
a year before the inauguration of Afghan Film.
There were American trainers
who came and trained us on film laboratory.
The first film and news piece that we made was
in the winter of 1967.
The old Afghanistan was a beautiful Afghanistan.
It was a good Afghanistan in every aspect.
-As far as the old movies are concerned,
there are more of these interesting, memorable scenes,
which both sadden one [by] conjuring up sad memories
and happy ones, for example, when our families were together
and the country was peaceful.
♪♪
-When the Taliban came, the zeitgeist had changed.
We would see that, day by day,
the conditions were getting darker.
-A group of the Taliban favored the preservation
of whatever there was of cultural heritage.
Yet, there was another group whose belief was that films
must be eliminated, since their thinking was
that maybe these movies were obscene,
or these films might ruin people's minds.
On that basis, the group decided
that they should destroy the movies.
-When the Taliban began, first the Taliban decided
to burn the films inside the Afghan Film compound.
And they did it.
When they started burning, a dense smoke rose.
When we saw that the films were being burned,
we focused our attention on what we should do from now on.
It was then that the decision was made.
We divided [the work] -- that this part should be hidden
like this and that part like that.
We managed to hide the films.
[The films] that were in the hangar outside were burned,
but the ones that were inside the building [were saved].
Around 7,000 reels
containing around 50,000 hours [were saved].
-When I check now,
I see that some of our films are not there anymore.
I think they might be among those that were burned.
-Why do you think the Taliban burned the movies?
-I don't know why they burned them.
They should be asked, "Why did you burn the movies?"
♪♪
-We want to see our country, our people,
from the beginning to the end,
how they turn out and what changes are brought about.
Never will I love anywhere else in the world
as much as I love my own land.