Articles

About Us

NATIONAL FILM ARCHIVE OF INDIA Ministry of Information & Broadcasting Govt. of India Established in February 1964 as a media unit under the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting the National Film Archive of India occupies a pride of place amongst India’s leading cultural and heritage management institutions today. The primary charter of NFAI is to …

Articles

Excerpts from the Inaugural Mani Kaul Memorial Lecture- Marco Mueller

Mani Kaul has been one of the few directors who really mattered for the New Cinema of this country. When he went back to the ancient representational forms and to the linguistics of the early grammarians from India, this was also to assert his idea of a contemporary cinema that would fight everything ornate, long-winded …

Articles

From Play House to Movie Theatre – By Rafique Baghdadi

Movie theatres in the city of Bombay – cinema’s birthplace, are written on the wall – ironically, walls plastered over with film posters.  The threat is clear by the fact that over the last few years, the number of theatres has dropped from 125 to 100. It is a nice round figure no doubt, but …

Articles

Glimpses from a Kaleidoscope – Haimanti Banerjee

The century was reaching mid way through the Indian cinema was slightly older than that. Then a little wonder happened. Text Box:  A honey sweet, girlish voice haunted the sub-continent: Aaye gaa, aaye gaa, aane wala. As the movie opened in the theatres, people rushed and were bewitched! This was the cinema of the year …

Articles

Ministry of Information & Broadcasting

India and Poland Sign Audio Visual Co-production Agreement to Enhance Bilateral Cooperation in the Films Sector Agreement Signed Between I&B Minister Smt. Ambika Soni and Mr. B. Zdrojewski, Minister of Culture and National Heritage of the Polish Government. India and Poland have signed an Audio visual Co-production Agreement. The Agreement was signed between Smt. Ambika …

Articles

Mughal -e- Azam – Arun Puranik

Directors are invariably fascinated by mythologies, historical events and characters. These stories may be stereotyped, familiar to the majority, but if the presentation is excellent, these stories are everlasting, effective and powerful. Emperor Akbar, Prince Salim and Charming Anarkali, the royal maid servant are historical characters. They lived 500 years  ago, still today limitless attraction …

Articles

One Hundred Years of Indian Cinema (The Art and Technology) – H.N.Narahari Rao

Tracing the history, birth and evolution of Indian cinema is always an exhilarating experience. According to historians, Harishchandra Sakharam Bhatwadekar (Save Dada, 1868-1958) and Hiralal Sen were among the pioneers who produced moving images in India for the first time. Bhatwadekar was part of the audience which attended Lumière’s actuals screened for the first time …

Articles

Prabhat – The Torchbearer of Social Awareness in Indian cinema – By H.N.Narahari Rao

Prabhat Film Company, which had its glorious days in the 1930s and 40s, has given the world of cinema some of the most renowned films of the early talkie era. The significant feature of Prabhat’s film classics was the variety of genres in which its films were made. Never at the beginning of the talkie …