When Shivendra Singh Dungarpur ‘s Film Heritage Foundation first wanted to restore “ Amma Ariyan ,” he could not get permission. The 1986 Malayalam film directed by John Abraham was not the property of a studio or a single estate. It had been made collectively – funded village by village, produced by a movement – and so the rights, such as they were, belonged to the Odessa Collective, the grassroots filmmaking group Abraham had co-founded. Many of its members had scattered. Some had died.