Question : National Film Heritage Mission

(a) whether the Government has created necessary infrastructure and environment with modern technology and state-of-art film archive setup for preservation and digitization of films under National Film Heritage Mission (NFHM);

(b) if so, the details thereof and the financial allocation made so far;

(c) whether several old films and large quantity of old film reels including rare reels both domestic and foreign are “missing/not in runnable condition”; and

(d) if so, the details thereof and the measures taken by the Government to restore, digitize and archive them?

THE MINISTER OF ENVIRONMENT, FOREST AND CLIMATE CHANGE; AND MINISTER OF INFORMATION AND BROADCASTING
(SHRI PRAKASH JAVADEKAR):
(a) & (b): Ministry of Information and Broadcasting has launched Central Sector Scheme namely ‘National Film Heritage Mission (NFHM)’ in the year 2014, to restore, digitize and archive films and filmic material through the National Film Archive of India (NFAI), Pune.
In order to create necessary infrastructure and environment with modern technology, the following activities are envisaged under the NFHM scheme:
• Setting up of Project Management Unit under NFHM
• Collection Assessment of Film Material
• Preventive Conservation of Film Content
• Restoration of Film Content
• Construction of Storage Facilities (Vaults)
• In-house capacity building through web-based End to End IT solutions
• Inter-negatives of feature films

The Scheme is spread over 2014-15 to 2020-21 and envisaged at a total cost of Rs.597.41 Crore. An amount of Rs.301.96 has been allotted under Budget Estimates so far.

(c) & (d): As per records, approximately 1,32,000 film reels are to be conserved; 1050 landmark feature films and 960 short films of Indian Cinema are to be restored; and 1160 feature films and 1660 short films are to be digitized under the NFHM scheme.
NFAI has 27 temperature control film vaults out of which 3 vaults are located at Phase I and 24 vaults are located at Phase II of NFAI. NFAI has entered into a Memorandum of Understanding with M/s National Buildings Construction Corporation (NBCC) India Limited in relation to planning, designing and construction of Storage facility (Vaults) of Global Standards and maintenance of NFAI facilities at Phase I and Phase II.
***