Tribute to P. K. Nair a passionate film archivist & the founder of National Film Archive of India, of India on his 86th birth anniversary.

Tribute to P. K. Nair a passionate film archivist & the founder of National Film Archive of India, of India on his 86th birth anniversary.
Paramesh Krishnan Nair (6 April 1933–4 March 2016) was an Indian film archivist and film scholar, who was the founder and director of the National Film Archive of India (NFAI) in 1964. He is regarded as the Henri Langlois of India because of his lifelong dedication towards the preservation of films in India. A passionate film archivist, he worked at the NFAI for over three decades, collecting films from India and from all over the world.
He was instrumental in acquiring for the archive several landmark Indian films like Dadasaheb Phalke’s Raja Harishchandra and Kaliya Mardan, Bombay Talkies films such as Jeevan Naiya, Bandhan, Kangan, Achhut Kanya and Kismet, S. S. Vasan’s Chandralekha and Uday Shankar’s Kalpana.
In 2012, Celluloid Man, an award-winning documentary was made on his life and works, by Shivendra Singh Dungarpur.
The National Film Archive of India was founded in 1964 and Nair was appointed to the post of assistant curator in November 1965. He established the archive from scratch by collecting films from all over India and the world and was promoted as director of the archive in 1982. He spearheaded the NFAI, Pune for nearly three decades and built up the archive which now enjoys a vibrant international reputation.
Landmark acquisitions include the Dadasaheb Phalke films and films of New Theatres, Bombay Talkies, Minerva Movietone, Wadia Movietone, Gemini Studios and AVM Productions.
He was instrumental in introducing the works of world masters of cinema like Ingmar Bergman, Akira Kurosawa, Andrzej Wajda, Miklós Jancsó, Krzysztof Zanussi, Vittorio De Sica, Federico Fellini, apart from significant Indian film makers like Satyajit Ray, Ritwik Ghatak, Mrinal Sen, V. Shantaram, Raj Kapoor and Guru Dutt to FTII students, film society members, and other film study groups in the country. He was also instrumental in setting up the International Film Festival of Kerala.
When he retired in April 1991, he had collected over 12,000 films, of which 8,000 are Indian.