It has been set up in 1964. It is housed in a campus at Law College Road, Pune. The historic Jaykar Bungalow is a part of it. It will soon be renovated. It completes 50 years on February 1, 2014. They have prepared a plan for digital library. A National Film Heritage Mission ( NFHM ) draft, 2012 is under consideration. It has 16000 archived films, of which only 329 have been digitrsed and restored and another 237 have only been digitised so far.

Acid-Detecting Process

Each film reel will be subjected to AD process. Here a strip which detects acid ( A-D strip ) is kept between reels for 24 hours. It is then taken out and observed. If the strip’s colour changes to green, it is an indication that the film is deteriorating and requires immediate measures to preserve them. In worst cases the strip turns yellow.

NFAI Treasure

Raja Harishchandra (1913) made by Dadasaheb Phalke.

Kalpana (1948) made by Uday Shankar.

Acuht Kanya (1936) by Fraz Osten.

Devdas (1935) by P C Baruah.

Chitralekha, Tamil (1948) by S S Vasan.

Hunterwali Ki Beti (1943) by Batuk Bhatt.

Lagna Pahave Karun, Marathi (1940) by Master Vinayak.

Navrang (1959) by V Shantaram

Sadahvi Meerabai (1937) by Baburao Painter.

Do Bigha Zamin (1950) by Bimal Roy.

By the time NFAI had been set up, the country had lost 70 per cent of the pre-1950 films. Many silver nitrate films were burnt, as these reels were used to extract silver.

When set up, it was called National Film Library. It occupied a small make up room of Prabhat theatre and had a budget of only Rs.25000. They started with 123 films collected by the censors. In 1969, they recovered the original print of Phalke’s Kaliya Mardan ( 1919 ). It became an independent body, NFAI in 1967.

Paramesh Krishnan ( P.K.) Nair was its founder-director.

Nair found three reels of Raja Harishchandra in two different places. He found the original print of Kidar Sharma’s Chitralekha ( 1964 ) from a cowshed in Kolkata. He got prints of Kanjibhai Rathod’s Sukanya Savitri ( 1922 ) from a cinema in Bangkok. The NFAI lost the first talkie Alam Ara to a fire.