TRIBUTE PAID TO P.K NAIR, LEGENDRAY INDIAN FILM ARCHIVIST

TRIBUTE PAID TO P.K NAIR,

 LEGENDRAY INDIAN FILM ARCHIVIST

India’s pioneering film archivist and film scholar P.K. Nair, the founder and former director of the National Film Archive of India (NFAI), passed away on 4^th March,2016,Friday morning following prolonged illness, said filmmaker and film archivist Shivendra Singh Dungarpur. He was 82.Nair, who was in critical condition since the last 10 days, passed away at 11 am at a hospital in Pune due to cardiac arrest, Dungarpur told.

“Tomorrow (Saturday) his body will be kept from 8 am in the morning at National Film Archive of India (NFAI) and the cremation will take place after that,” Dungarpur, also the founder director of Film Heritage Foundation, added. Dungarpur directed a documentary film “Celluloid Man” in 2012, which explored the life and work of Nair.

P.K. Nair always remained an eager student who visited and revisited the black and white reels of of cinema history. The archivist spent a lifetime as the guardian of classics, reviving many a gem from the rusted boxes abandoned to oblivion. He will be remembered among the masters of world cinema... Nair's finds include the only archived full-length film from Dadasaheb Phalke, the father of Indian cinema.

Carefully saved film, made it open to all. P.K. Nair, 86, who “saved the butterflies of silver screen” (in the expressions of incredible Shine movie producer Kryzstof Zanussi), passed away in Pune on Friday. Zanussi utilized the butterfly purposeful anecdote to accentuate not only the magnificence of silver screen as an artistic expression, additionally the short lifespan of its old self.

When Nair started protecting and documenting movies, the greater part of those made till Autonomy had been lost. Nair carefully saved silver screen and made it available to the individuals who later rose as the greats of Indian movies. To put it plainly, he made film unceasing.Nair joined the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) in Pune as an examination right hand in 1961 and went ahead to assume a key part in setting up the National Film Archives of India (NFAI) in 1964. He was named associate custodian in 1965 and proceeded with the NFAI till 1991.

At the point when Nair joined NFAI, it was an empty spot. He found that the principal Indian film made, ‘Raja Harishchandra’, was missing; so were large portions of the early works of art. He went to Nashik to meet the child of Dadasaheb Phalke, the producer of Harishchandra. (It is a coldblooded incongruity that specific areas felt that he was just a civil servant to be respected with a Dada Saheb Phalke recompense).He went to Kolkata to meet Uday Shankar and get a duplicate of his move dramatization, ‘Kalpana’. This experience looking for missing prints turned into a coupling enthusiasm for Nair. He went far and wide in the nation, in trains, transports, and with neighborhood guides.He would meet groups of old movie producers, and now and again discover movies even in cowsheds. When he resigned, he had obtained an astounding 12,000 movies for the chronicle. Of these, 8,000 were Indian and the rest remote.A portion of the works of art he recovered from obscurity and put something aside for successors are: Kaliya Mardan, Bombay Talkies’ movies, for example, Jeevan Naiya, Bandhan, Kangan, Achhut Kanya and Kismet, and S.S. Vasan’s Chandralekh

Prof. John Kurakar.