Mission Statement
Film Heritage Foundation is a not-for-profit organization set up by Shivendra Singh Dungarpur in 2014. It is dedicated to supporting the conservation, preservation and restoration of the moving image and to developing interdisciplinary programs to create awareness about the language of cinema.
Programs and Activities
A member of the International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF) since 2015, Film Heritage Foundation is the only non-governmental organization in the country working in the field of film preservation.
Training Initiatives
Training a resource of future film archivists is a major focus for the foundation as one of the major challenges we face is the lack of trained personnel to work in the field of film preservation.
Film Heritage Foundation in association with FIAF has been conducting annual film preservation and restoration workshops in different cities around India since 2015. The first workshop was held at the Films Division in Mumbai in 2015, the second at the National Film Archives of India in 2016 and the third at the Prasad Laboratories in Chennai in 2017. The next workshop is scheduled to be held in Kolkata in 2018. Besides india, these workshops are also open to neighbouring countries like Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Myanmar and Malaysia that are similarly lacking in a resource of trained personnel to preserve their audiovisual heritage.
Film Collection
Film Heritage Foundation has a growing film collection of 8 mm, 16 mm and 35 mm film reels stored in controlled conditions for preservation that includes the films of celebrated artists like Amitabh Bachchan, Shyam Benegal, Govind Nihalani, Kumar Shahani, Vishal Bharadwaj and Mani Ratnam amongst others.
Non-film archive
We also maintain non-film archives of JBH Wadia, A.R. Kardar, Kidar Sharma, Saeed Mirza, Pran, Kundan Shah and P K Nair besides our own collection that holds a trove of paper and photographic material including scripts, posters, lobby cards, song booklets, film magazines and photographs representing the gamut of different regional film industries in India.
Do You Speak Cinema
Film Heritage Foundation has developed a five-chapter module designed to explore the various facets of cinema from the evolution of cinema in the celluloid format to film history to the appreciation of its visual language. The modules are essentially for children, but can be tailor-made for different ages. The aim is to equip them to become a discerning audience in a world in which they are constantly bombarded with images and is particularly relevant to the born digital generation.
Publication
Film Heritage Foundation has published two books: “From Darkness Into Light – Perspectives on Film Preservation & Restoration” edited by Rajesh Devraj and “Yesterday’s Films For Tomorrow” by P K Nair.