National Film Archive of India

The National Film Archive of India (NFAI) is India's principal institution for the preservation and study of cinema, headquartered in Pune, Maharashtra. Established in February 1964 as a media unit of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, it has served for decades as the country's central repository for film heritage and a member genre of the International Federation of Film Archives. In March 2022, the NFAI was merged with the National Film Development Corporation, marking a significant structural change in its administrative framework. Its mission encompasses tracing, acquiring, and preserving Indian cinema's heritage, classifying and documenting film data, conducting research, and disseminating film culture across India and internationally.

The NFAI was founded in 1964, initially as an adjunct facility to the Film and Television Institute of India according to German-language accounts, though English sources describe it as a media unit of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. The initiative to create the archive came from P. K. Nair, a library employee with deep interest in film, who developed the institution from scratch and served as its first director from 1982 until his retirement in 1991. The archive established regional offices in Bangalore, Kolkata, and Thiruvananthapuram to extend its reach across India. The institution has faced significant preservation crises, most notably on 8 January 2003, when a devastating fire at the Prabhat Studio complex of FTII in Pune destroyed unduplicated nitrate-based films in the NFAI vault. Then Minister of State Ravi Shankar Prasad reported to the Rajya Sabha that 607 films in 5,097 reels were lost, including works by Dadasaheb Phalke and major productions from Prabhat Film Company, Wadia Movietone, Bombay Talkies, and New Theatres. In March 2019, the Comptroller and Auditor General of India reported that 31,000 reels were lost or destroyed according to records audited between 1 May 2015 and 30 September 2017. Prakash Magdum serves as the current head of the institution.

The NFAI maintains extensive holdings spanning multiple formats and eras of Indian cinema. The archive contains over 10,000 films, with materials dating back to the 1910s. Its non-film collections include over 10,000 books, over 10,000 film scripts, and over 50,000 photographs according to one accounting, while German sources cite over 130,000 photographs, more than 16,000 film posters, nearly 12,000 song lyrics, press clippings, and phonograph records. The library holds approximately 25,000 books on film and cinema from worldwide publication. The archive's stock encompasses films, video cassettes, DVDs, books, posters, stills, press clippings, slides, audio CDs, and disc records. Beyond Indian cinema, the NFAI also assembles a representative collection of international film heritage. The institution has supplied Indian classics for major international screening programmes and collaborates with foreign institutions including the European Union, Max Müller Bhavan, and Alliance française to promote film art.

The 2003 fire at the Prabhat Studio complex revealed the historical significance of the NFAI's holdings by what was lost. The destroyed films included Dadasaheb Phalke's Raja Harishchandra (1913), widely considered India's first full-length feature film, along with his Lanka Dahan (1917) and Kaliya Mardan (1919). Other irreplaceable losses included Prabhat Film Company's Bhakta Prahlada (1932), Amar Jyoti (1936) by V. Shantaram, Manoos (1939), and Aage Badho (1947), as well as works from Wadia Movietone, Bombay Talkies, and New Theatres. These losses underscore both the archive's role as guardian of foundational Indian cinema and the vulnerabilities of nitrate film preservation. The NFAI's active distribution library serves approximately 25 member institutions throughout India, and it organizes joint screening programmes on weekly, fortnightly, and monthly bases in six major centres.

The NFAI is located in the Kothrud district of Pune, Maharashtra, situated on park-like grounds in a central location. The facility includes a modern, air-conditioned cinema hall with capacity for approximately 600 visitors, where the archive presents films and film series on an almost daily basis. The 2003 fire occurred at a vault housed in the Prabhat Studio complex of FTII in Pune, indicating that the archive's physical infrastructure has historically been distributed across multiple sites in the city. The main facility in Kothrud serves as the centre for the archive's preservation, research, and public programming activities.