Karnataka Chalanachitra Academy to set up film archives, museum

Bengaluru: Karnataka Chalanachitra Academy (KCA) is all set to set up a state-of-the-art Kannada film archives and museum.

KCA has constituted a seven-member committee, headed by chairman Suneel Puranik for the purpose. N. Vidyashankar, art director of Bengaluru International Film Festival, historian Suresh Moona, art director Arun Sagar, cinematographer Ashok Kashyap, writer Muralidhara Khajane and Himantha Raju G, registrar KCA, are the members of the expert committee.

The seven-member team has been asked to formulate modalities for acquiring surviving film prints, Beta copies, publicity stills, songs books handbills, books on Kannada cinema, still photographs, lobby cards and everything that is associated with the film culture of Karnataka.

"I love Kannada as a language, and proud to be part of the industry. I cannot forget the affection shown to me by our great actors Rajkumar, Vishnuvardhan and Ambareesh and many others. Also Bengaluru holds a special place in my heart. So now things have completely changed, and the Kannada film archives and Kannada museum is a step of preserving old films which will be helpful for research. A collection of over a hundred reels has already been made" says KCA chairman Sunil Puranik.

The brief of this committee is to submit a detailed report on setting up of archives on the lines of the National Film Archive of India (NFA) in Pune and Film Museum in Mumbai. The committee will also identify institutions across the country, which extend support in developing the archives and museum. The immediate task of KCA is to fast track the process of gathering and preserving, digitalising, and restoring all the archival material of every form.

Academy strongly believes that classifying and documenting data and materials pertaining to films, will help encourage research on Kannada cinema.

KCA says archives and museum are coming at Amruthotsava Bhavana in Nandini Layout, Bengaluru, which is the headquarters of KCA and Directorate of Bengaluru International Film Festival. The Pune based National Film Archives of India (NFA) has promised to support Karnataka's effort to establish a full-fledged archives of its own.

Willing to donate?

Anyone willing to donate relevant materials including: Film posters song and lyrics published and unpublished books Screenplay scripts Film-related books on other sub-languages of Karnataka such as; Tulu, Kodava, Konkani, Banjara, and Byari.