NFAI conducts industry stakeholder consultation meeting in Guwahati for NFHM

The meeting was attended by key players of the industry, including producers, production houses, content owners, representatives of various film associations and film historians.

NFHM aims at the Preventive Conservation of film reels, Digitization, Restoration, Preservation, training and capacity building in the field of film archiving and creation of state-of-the-art archiving facilities at Pune.

Seeing these valiant objectives and the mammoth volume of film material available in the country, NFAI organized stakeholder consultation meetings across India, starting from June, 2016.

“The aim of these meetings is to seek suggestions from the film industry so that the project can be implemented successfully. NFAI seeks to bring in industry perspective and expertise, as the success of the mission depends on an effective synergy with the industry," said Prakash Magdum, Director, NFAI.

“These consultation meetings would help NFAI in creating the future roadmap and adopting best practices from the industry, so as to implement the mission as per global standards. We intend to hold few more consultations in order to cover all regional film industries, so that NFHM would be representing every aspect of Indian cinema,” Magdum said.

The focus of these meetings is to discuss areas of interest and concern, including but not limited to the content collection policy of NFAI, public-private partnership for NFHM, means of content access post digitization and the optimum parameters to be used for film selection and prioritization.

NFAI has already held such meetings in Mumbai, Chennai, Bangalore, Thiruvananthapuram and Hyderabad which saw the participation from film production houses, film historians, film labs, individual directors and producers, film associations and bodies etc.

To name a few participants, eminent personalities including Jahnu Barua, renowned filmmaker and a High Level Committee member for NFHM, and Parthajit Baruah were present at the Guwahati consultation meeting.

The meeting saw representation from Artha Films and the Government of Assam as well.

Further to these meetings, Prakash Magdum requested the general public to contribute to the mission in any way big or small.

“We appeal to film lovers and enthusiasts to help NFAI in tracing and acquiring rare film footages and other material like film posters, still photographs, song booklets, lobby cards etc. so that it can be preserved for posterity,” Magdum said.

(Reporting by Hemanta Kumar Nath)