Film Archives to boost restoration of aging films

Film Archives to boost restoration of aging films
HERALD REPORTER
PANJIM, NOV 21
Pune-based National Film Archives of India (NFAI) is strengthening its move to make films, which are on the threshold of being vanished.
Director of NFAI Vijay Jadhav who is leading a poster campaign exhibition at IFFI said that the ‘theme based’ competition aims to salute the long range of distinguished Dadasaheb Phalke awardees.
“We have 41 panels based on 41 Dadasaheb Phalke awardees from 1969 onwards. The idea is to ensure that the current generation is aware of the awardees,” he said. The exhibition will open on Monday at 11:30am.
He further said, that the NFAI had succeeded in restoring nearly 200 classic films out of which five will be screened at the IFFI this year in a Bluer ray disc format.
The five films include Parwana directed by J K Nanda, Rojulu Marayi directed by Tapi Chanakya, Baishey Shravan directed by Mrinal Sen, Marthanda Varma directed by P V Rao and Ashok Kumar directed by Raja Chandrashekhar.
“The NFAI has recently launched a digital restoration project where rare Indian films are restored digitally with a view to safeguarding the content for posterity,” he said.
The director however seems upset that the industry was not lending its full-cooperation to NFAI in archiving and restoring movies.
 “We need to preserve movies for future. Even after several reminders they are delay in giving respective film copies. At time when it is sent, we have to go through more procedures to get its complete details,” he stated.
Jadhav also rued that some national winning movies are not in NFAI’s store though Directorate of film Festival has succeeded in getting all these. “Since 1913 the film industry has produced over 43,000 feature films and only 5000-odd movies are in NFAI archives,” he said.
NFAI’s main aim is to preserve art of cinema and film culture, and with the coming of digitization, it indeed helps further, he further said.