#2: Accessibility at National Film Archive of India (NFAI)
“A film preserved but never seen is, at best, an institutional achievement and at worst, a monument to institutional indifference.”
Having over 22 official languages, hundreds of dialects, and numerous regional film industries, India produced over 2000 films annually. Although Bollywood remains the dominant one, it represents only one part of India’s vast cinematic landscape. However, despite the massive amount of films that were produced, the acknowledgement and effort of preservation were not in place at the same time.
Recap#1 Global Audiovisual Archiving Conference 2026
“Let me illustrate this with reference to the part of the world where I live – the Southeast Asia/Pacific region… It’s home to half a billion people – a twelfth of the world’s population. Does it also have – should it have – a twelfth of the world’s preserved moving image heritage? How does it rate in world terms?”
— Ray Edmondson, “Archiving Outside of the Frame” (2000)
If Ray Edmondson raised this question decades ago, then this year’s Global Audiovisual Archiving (GAVA) Conference feels like an ongoing dialogue in response to that question.