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Film archive in Guwahati

By Abdul Gani |


A long nurtured dream of the film loving people of the region has finally come to life as the first ever film achieve of northeast was formally inaugurated by Assam Chief minister Tarun Gogoi in the presence of several prominent film personalities in the city. The move to bring up the organization was initiated by Assam State Film (Finance and Development) Corporation (ASFFDC).


The film achieve which has the capacity to store 1000 films in fully state-of-the-art technology with controlled room temperature and 24 hour power back up, has so far collected 65 movies of Assam.


“The scientific preservation of films will not only enhance the life span of films but it will also enable the film lovers to study on the gradual process of the Assamese films and the other regional films of our region besides doing research on the same,” said Bobbeeta Sharma chairperson of ASFFDC.


“The film archive has fulfilled a long-felt need of the Assamese filmmakers as the lack of it so far had resulted in many rare Assamese films made during the last 76 years having either got lost or damaged due to the absence of scientific preservation of celluloid films in Assam,” she further said adding that they have also invited filmmakers from neighbouring states like Manipur to send their films for preservation.


Sharma also said that ASFFDC is planning to set several other projects in the coming days. “Besides the films, we have arranged for the preservation of the posters and till now we have gathered an array of such posters. We are also hopeful of bringing up a film museum, a film library and a film café,” she said.


ASFFDC has collected some of the rare Assamese 35 mm and 16 mm celluloid films with good running condition. “We may point out that a number of valuable films have already got damaged. The effort, however, is on to retrieve those which are not damaged and available with their makers. Whenever we have not been able to collect the old films in celluloid format, we have stored the same in DVD format,” said another official of the archive.


The founder director of the National Film Archive of India in Pune, P K Nair who is the consultant of the archive said it was a positive step and he was glad to be part of it.


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