National Film Archives of India to digitise 1,000 feature films in 5 years

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: National Film Archives of India (NFAI) is on a mission to digitize 1,000 feature films and 1500 short films by 2021. NFAI director Prakash Magdum, who was in the capital on Friday, has also called upon the public to contribute any film-related content of historical value – home videos, audio clips, videos of ceremonial functions, song books – to the Archives.

“Contributors will be properly acknowledged. We are even willing to pay them,” Mr Magdum said. The NFAI director was in the capital to discuss with filmmakers, producers and film historians on ways to take forward the Rs 600-crore project, called the National Film Archives Mission. He had already held discussions in Mumbai, Chennai, and Bangalore. He has lined up meetings in Hyderabad, Guwahati, Kolkata and Delhi in the coming days.

The digitization project goes beyond the preservation measures NFAI is already engaged in. "Preserving films in celluloid will not make it accessible to the public. But digitization would,” Mr Magdum said. After digitizing, NFAI will create celluloid versions, in archival jargon the ‘inter negative’, out of the digitized versions. “Celluloid if kept in the right conditions will last for a century, not a digital film that requires regular costly upgradations,” Mr Magdum said. The director interacted with film historians and writers on Friday to evolve a set of parameters that would help in picking the 1000 feature films.

“What factors should be considered in deciding the films to ensure representation of all major languages and cultures,” he asked. He also wanted weightage assigned to each of these parameters. “Should an award-winning film given greater weightage than, say, a commercially important film,” he said. One suggestion he received was that the films selected from a region should be proportionate to the number of films produced there. Another was that old films alone should be digitized.