The National Film Archive of India (NFAI) was established as a media unit of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting in February 1964. It is was a member of the International Federation of Film Archives. In March 2022, it was merged with National Film Development Corporation.

Objectives

Its three principal objectives are: to trace, acquire and preserve for posterity the heritage of Indian cinema; to classify, document data and undertake research relating to films; to act as a centre for the dissemination of film culture.

Organization

With headquarters at

Pune Pune (; ; also known as Poona, ( the official name from 1818 until 1978) is one of the most important industrial and educational hubs of India, with an estimated population of 7.4 million As of 2021, Pune Metropolitan Region is the largest i ...

Maharashtra Maharashtra (; , abbr. MH or Maha) is a state in the western peninsular region of India occupying a substantial portion of the Deccan Plateau. Maharashtra is the second-most populous state in India and the second-most populous country subdi ...

, NFAI had three regional offices at

Bangalore Bangalore (), officially Bengaluru (), is the capital and largest city of the Indian state of Karnataka. It has a population of more than and a metropolitan population of around , making it the third most populous city and fifth most ...

Calcutta Kolkata (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , the official name until 2001) is the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal, on the eastern bank of the Hooghly River west of the border with Bangladesh. It is the primary business, commer ...

and

Thiruvananthapuram Thiruvananthapuram (; ), also known by its former name Trivandrum (), is the capital of the Indian state of Kerala. It is the most populous city in Kerala with a population of 957,730 as of 2011. The encompassing urban agglomeration populati ...

. Developed from scratch by P. K. Nair, NFAI's activities related to the dissemination of film culture were manifold. Its Distribution Library had about 25 active members throughout the country and it also organized joint screening programmes on a weekly, fortnightly and monthly basis in six important centres. It had over 10,000 films, over 10,000 books, over 10,000 film scripts, and over 50,000 photographs. Another important programme was the film teaching scheme comprising long and short-term Film Appreciation courses conducted in collaboration with the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) and other educational and cultural institutions. At the International level, NFAI supplied several Indian classics for major screening programmes. The NFAI's archive kept a stock of films, video cassettes, DVDs, books, posters, stills, press clippings, slides, audio CDs, and disc records of Indian cinema dating back to the 1910s.

State of preservation

On 8 January 2003, a large fire caused a massive destruction in the vault of NFAI housed in the Prabhat Studio complex of Film and Television Institute of India in

, in which unduplicated irreplaceable films with a nitrate base were destroyed.

Ravi Shankar Prasad Ravi Shankar Prasad (born 30 August 1954) is an Indian politician and lawyer, from the Bharatiya Janata Party. A Member of Parliament since 2000, first in the Rajya Sabha (2000-2019) and then in the Lok Sabha (since 2019), Prasad has served as ...

the then Minister of State, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India announced in the

Rajya Sabha The Rajya Sabha, constitutionally the Council of States, is the upper house of the bicameral Parliament of India. , it has a maximum membership of 245, of which 233 are elected by the legislatures of the states and union territories using si ...

that 607 films in 5,097 reels were lost in the fire. Among the greatest loss were films by Dadasaheb Phalke including: '' Raja Harishchandra'' (1913), '' Lanka Dahan'' (1917) and ''

Kaliya Mardan ''Kaliya Mardan'' (also known as ''The Childhood of Krishna'') is a 1919 Indian silent film directed by Dadasaheb Phalke Dhundiraj Govind Phalke (Pronunciation: ̪ʱuɳɖiɾaːd͡ʒ pʰaːɭke, popularly known as Dadasaheb Phalke () (30 ...

'' (1919). Important films produced by Prabhat Film Company, Wadia Movietone, Bombay Talkies and New Theatres, were also gutted, namely: '' Bhakta Prahlada'' (1932), '' Amar Jyoti'' (1936), '' Manoos'' (1939), ''

Aage Badho Aage Badho () is a 1947 Hindi language movie directed by Yeshwant Pithkar, starring Dev Anand, Khurshid, Vasant Thengdi, Kusum Deshpande, and Madhukar Apte. Cast *Dev Anand * Khurshid * Kamala Kotnis *Vasant Thengdi *Kusum Deshpande *Madhukar ...

'' (1947) and others. In March 2019, the

Comptroller and Auditor General of India The Comptroller and Auditor General of India is the supreme audit institution of India, established under Article 148 of the Constitution of India. They are empowered to audit all receipts and expenditure of the Government of India and the ...

reported that 31,000 reels at the NFAI were reported lost or destroyed, when it audited the records between May 1, 2015, and September 30, 2017.

References

External links

National Film Archive of India Official WebsiteNational Film Archive of India YouTube Channel
1964 establishments in Maharashtra Government agencies established in 1964 Film archives in India Archives in India Film organisations in India Film preservation Organisations based in Pune Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (India) {{India-museum-stub