Just for Info and possible interest:

http://www.screenindia.com/fullstory.ph ... nt_id=9881

Rs.10 crore film vault for National Film Archives

Posted online: Friday, February 18, 2005 at 0000 hours IST


After having preserved and conserved over 1.20 lakh films for over four decades, the National Film Archive of India (NFAI) has taken another step towards safeguarding the heritage of Indian cinema - by beginning work on the phase-II of NFAI, the Rs 10-crore colour film vault project. Though the proposal got the nod at the beginning of the 10th Five-Year Plan in 2002, it took three years before red-tapism could be cut for the project to get off ground.

“It will be a four-storeyed building which will be in line with international preservation standards. It will take care of the storage requirement of the archive for the next 15 years,” informs NFAI director KS Sasidharan.

After having lost at least 50 years of filmmaking history— the NFAI came into existence only in February 1964 — it hopes to keep at least the future intact. “The project is expected to be completed in two years— before the end of the current Five-Year Plan (in 2007). It will have a preview theatre with 200 seats and we will be shifting around 6,000 colour prints to the new vault once it is finished,” Sasidharan added.

The current underground vault, whcih is actually a black-and-white film vault, today stores these colour film prints. “We can store 1.20 lakh cans of films (at the underground vault). But there is an acute shortage of storage space. Today, we are not able to accept movies which were made in the ’90s. We have to prioritise, as there is a heavy resource crunch, and accept the earliest and oldest films,” he rued.

The black-and-white underground vault at NFAI is maintained at 16 degree Celsius and with a relative humidity of 50 per cent (plus or minus 5). “But colour films are more susceptible to the vagaries of weather. The colour vault will have a temperature of 2 degree celsius with a relative humidity of 25-30 per cent. It wil also have a provision for air change— flow of fresh air— every five hours. Humidity is the main problem,” Sasidharan pointed out. Varying temperatures, industrial gases and dust have also made preservation and conservation a cumbersome task.

Having just finished watching "More Treasures from American Film Archives" and expecting to catch up with "Edison - The Invention of the Movies" DVD's - I wonder will we ever be able see Indian movies from the silent era on DVD ? . I wish someone would take them from the vault, clean it up and put it on DVD for sale. I for sure would buy them in a heartbeat.

BTW for those interested - both the boxset are great and are quintessential viewing for any serious film fan .

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/de ... s=dvd&st=*

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/de ... ance&s=dvd

I doubt many Indian silent films are extant. Some Indian silent recently played at a film festival. Light of Asia was its name, I believe. But it would be great if someone would put the films of Phalke, the Saigal version of Devdas, etc. on DVD.

I have seen the first Treasures from the American Film Archives box and it is interesting.

I wanted own that one but it appears to be temporarily OOP now and is slated for Re-release in May 2005 http://www.filmpreservation.org/dvd/treasures.html