In first phase of the ambitious National Film Heritage Mission undertaken by the Information and Broadcasting Ministry, the National Film Archive of India (NFAI) in Pune, will assess the condition of a staggering 1.32 lakh film reels archived by it and take necessary measures to prolong their life.
Under the Film Condition Assessment project, each film reel will be tracked and monitored through RFID tagging.
The National Film Heritage Mission is a one-of-its-kind project in the world, on which the Government is investing `600 crore for preservation to make rich filmic heritage available with the NFAI, for the future generations.
launching the project at a function held at the NFAI on Saturday, I&B Secretary Ajay Mittal said that his Ministry was committed to safeguarding the country’s filmic and non-filmic heritage and is taking all necessary steps to preserve films and non-filmic material for posterity as per global standards. On the sidelines of the occasion, Mittal also launched NFAI’s initiative of digitisation of non-filmic material.
“NFAI has undertaken the digitalisation of non-film material at the Archive as part of the Centre’s Digital India initiative. Under this project, the NFAI would digitise, restore and make available to the people at large,” Mittal said.
“NFAI has been the custodian of a large number of film ancillary material like posters, photos, song booklets, pamphlets, press clippings, slides transparencies, glass negatives etc. These would be digitized and restored during the process,” the I&B Secretary said.
Speaking on the occasion, NFAI Director Prakash Magdum said, “It is not going to be an easy task to digitise and restore more than 1,100 feature films and 1,600 short films across Indian languages over the next five years”.
Expressing his happiness over the response that NFAI has got for the project from film makers across the country including the mainstream Hindi film industry, Magdum said, “Utilising social media platforms have helped us reach out to larger audience”.
Meanwhile, to coincide with the launch of the Film Condition Assessment project, NFAI in collaboration with the Directorate of Film Festivals has organized a 3 day North East Film Festival at the NFAI auditorium.
Bhaskar Hazarika’s award winning Assamese film ‘Kothanodi’ was screened as the inaugural film, after a colourful presentation of North East art and culture.
Fourteen films including last year’s National Award winning filmsand Indian Panorama films such as loktak lairembee (Manipuri), Onaatah (Khasi) and Sabin Alun (Karbi) will be screened during the festival.
Utpal Borpujari’s “Memories of a Forgotten War” and Films Division of India’s “1962 : Tezpur” are also being screened at the festival.